Or fried rice wrapped up in an omelet just like my mom used to make

Om Rice topped with Sriracha and Ketchup

Cheap eats, like this omurice are my new passion. It reminds me of all the wonderfully frugal meals my mother would make for us back before my parent’s salary stretched to T-bone steaks. Since I began writing on personal finance for Money Ning and HealthCompare Guide, I’m even more committed to making the best food possible without spending an exorbitant amount.

As far as cheap eats go, it’s hard to beat fried rice wrapped in an omelet, otherwise known as omurice. Up until 10 minutes ago I would have sworn on Kurt Vonnegut’s grave that it was omie rhymes with homie rice, but when I looked it up to get a correct spelling and kept coming up with omurice I called my mother and she said she didn’t know where I got omie rice from because she always called it omurice.

This is not only an inexpensive dinner, but super easy to throw together. My mother used to keep bags of frozen salad shrimp and frozen mixed vegetables on hand. Unlike most recipes I’ve seen written down for fried rice that call for the rice to be cold, this one does just fine using freshly cooked, hot rice.We use medium grain calrose rice, such as Nishiki. It clumps together slightly and makes an appealingly sticky fried rice.

I make this dish a lot the day after we have roast pork, steak, roast beef to stretch the leftover meat into another full meal for us.

I’m so not going to give you a recipe for fried rice, because this is clean out the fridge food. This is just go wild and crazy and throw everything together food. This is you really can’t go wrong as long as you don’t dump a whole bottle of soy sauce into it food.

Pretty much I make a couple of omelets. One or two for the fried rice and one per person to serve. Set aside the prettiest ones for wrapping and chop up the others.

Next, I chop a small onion or half a medium one and when it is starting to soften I throw a cup or two of frozen vegetable medley in there. You could use fresh veggies, but the frozen ones are cheap, more or less as nutritious and dead easy.

When that’s just about done toss in a bit of chopped garlic and cook until fragrant. Add your protein. Today I used some chopped leftover pork and some thawed salad shrimp. We’ve been known to use cubed Spam or leftover steak or chicken or make it completely vegetarian.

Once that’s all hot, put it in a bowl and pour a tablespoon or so of oil into the pan and once that’s hot add your rice. Probably about 1 – 1.5 cups of cooked rice per serving would be good.

Toss that around a bit, add a bit of sesame oil break up the rice clumps and get every nice and hot.

Take that bowl of cooked veggies and meat and add a little bit of soy sauce. Better to add too little than too much, remember you can always add more. I use a mix of regular Kikoman soy sauce and ketjap manis. Add that to the rice and mix everything up until it’s evenly distributed and everything is hot and yummy. Add the chopped omelet and stir again.

Drape one of the omelets inside a small bowl. Pack full of rice. Tuck the edges up over the bottom and turn out onto a plate. Top with some ketchup, sriracha or both. Chow down. You could also just lay the omelet flat on a plate, put the rice inside and roll like a burrito or something. Whatever suits your fancy.

Do you have a favorite way to use leftovers?

Note: post contains affiliate links for the ingredients. You most likely could find everything you need at your grocery store but if you want or need to order from Amazon, I am not opposed to making money off of it. My Yan Yan habit is not cheap, you know.

Or, more stuff I bought just to see what was inside

Found at Ike’s, have no idea if mixing cheese and caramel popcorn is a “thing” or not.  All I know is I hate getting those big mixed cans of popcorn unless they are all sweet or all savory flavors because the smells mingle and the tastes transfer. So, I was intrigued at the idea of somebody on purpose mixing up cheese and caramel popcorn.

Yup, it’s all in there mixed up together!

And each flavor on its own was pretty bad. The cheese was artificial in the gross way like off brand macaroni and cheese and not in the good way like Kraft brand macaroni and cheese. The caramel might have been good but it was all dusted with icky artificial cheap cheese powder.

I thought perhaps it would be one of those miracle combinations where the sum was so much greater than the parts, but no it was triple as much icky in my mouth when I popped in one of each as it was when I sampled each on its own.

Perhaps this is one of those things you have to grow up with to enjoy? Like Miracle Whip or tiny baby pies!

It’s an itty bitty fancy pie! I’ve loved mini pecan pies ever since I was a small girl. We had this Mickey Mouse version of Gulliver’s travels and I always loved this illustration of Mickey all giant in Lilliput with teeny tiny everything including itsy bitsy food. Since then I’ve been fascinated with miniature food.

Especially if I can cut it into really small pieces and pretend like I’m a huge giant eating it! I only wish I had some of those tiny teacups left from my childhood so I could take teeny sips of tea between bites.

Although to tell the truth the pie was kind of lousy, even though it was fancy, but that’s okay because there wasn’t very much of it.

Do you like miniature food or are you more of a comically over-sized foods fan?

Or, microwave milkshakes, microwave pork rinds… if I can find something else microwavable tomorrow, we can call it microwave madness week!

New from Kroger, it's microwavable milkshakes!

When I saw these microwavable milkshakes today, I knew I had to go on and get some and post about it, because no doubt thousands of shoppers across the nation are waiting to see what I think before they take the plunge. My only wish is that I’d saved some of the microwavable pork rinds to see if they = or != Wendy’s fries dipped in a Frosty.

Because that’s the kind of reporting that you get a Bloggie for, I tell you what.

This will be short and sweet, my dear 15 year old son Nicholas agreed to help me out. Please note: if you are his Grandma, it is summer vacation and I am letting him get shaggy as is his wont to do.

Microshake nutritional information

If you want to see larger versions, visit Microwavable Milkshakes on Flickr. The ingredients are about what you expect. High in calories and sugar but it’s a milkshake. The portion size was much more reasonable than a fast food shake, which is a plus. I’ve been known to share out one large Chick Fil-A or Sonic shake between my four smaller boys (ages 2-7) and they’ll still have leftovers. That’s nuts.

Instructions for the microshake

Still frozen

The lid was flexible plastic, like a margarine tub lid. The shake was a little hairy like ice cream gets but not unduly so.  The finished product didn’t have a freezer burned taste at all.

Cooked

I went ahead and zapped it for 40 seconds as our microwave is the standard 1000 watts. I thought I might have overdone it because the outsides were really watery. It was fine, though and the second one, which we microwaved for 30 seconds was also good. I’d go ahead and start with 30 seconds, just in case, because it’s not easy to tell how melted it is by looking at the top of the shake as it rotates merrily around your microwave oven.

Microshake chunk

But all of these chunks of still frozen ice cream made it thick and creamy as we broke them up with the spoon. I thought about using a stick blender, but I think it might have made it too frothy. Mixing it together didn’t take terribly long and could easily be done by a child. I would transfer it to a larger glass or cup before giving to a younger child to avoid messes.

Nick approved

The verdict? I thought it was okay, but far too sweet and not rich and creamy enough. I wouldn’t turn one down, but I wouldn’t buy it for my own consumption, either. I’d just as soon get some regular ice cream. The price wasn’t terrible, $1.99 (I think it was on special though) and although it’s not great nutrition, I wouldn’t be opposed to getting one as a rare treat for the boys. I really wanted to try the peanut butter flavor, but my youngest can’t have peanut products and I thought it would be mean to have this within his sight.

The boy’s verdict? Nicholas said it was fantastic and gave it 4.4 stars out of 5. I should note that he is a connoisseur of those gas station milkshakes. The little boys thought it was terrific, too. I think they liked the novelty of it more than anything else.

PS – I posted then realized what these remind me of. Remember those little cake mixes that you could get back in the 1980s for chocolate chip cake and coffee cake that came with its own paper baking pan? I remember baking the crap out of those when I was a kid and getting such a kick out of that crappy little pan. This is that kind of food, I think. Yeah, it’s not great for your kid but they’ll enjoy the experience so every once in a blue moon when they have a friend over for a sleepover you could let them make these themselves and have a ball.

I also realized that since I do sometimes do sponsored reviews now, I should make clear that I will always let you know when I get a freebie. Those go on special ad-free pages of this blog, so it’s easy to pick out.

PPS I wonder if Kroger was inspired by this:

Or, the food post I’ve waited 15 years to do

Low Carb!

I first became aware of microwavable pork rinds sometime before my first son was born when I found several bags in my parent’s house. I was not brave enough to try them then and ever since I’ve kind of regretted that.

Then I saw a display of bags by the check out counter at Ike’s Discount Drug and thought to myself, in not now, when? If not me, who?

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know these have been around forever. We can’t all be hip to all the new convenience products made out of external organs like you are.

As you can see it looks like a bag of the more familiar microwave popcorn. The pictures are kind of small, so if you’d like to get a better look at the instructions check out Microwave Pork Rinds on Flickr.

The instructions note that the bag won’t make popping sounds like microwave popcorn and won’t inflate as fully. This is true. However, much like microwave popcorn, they do fill the room with an unmistakable aroma. Cooking pig skin has a distinctive odor. I wouldn’t call it bad, but it probably makes pregnant women puke. Again, much like microwave popcorn.

See, not very inflated at all.

They look like pork rinds, they taste like pork rinds.  I wish they hadn’t, because I’m not crazy about pork rinds. I do like the crackling on the top of a pork roast, so I’m thinking maybe I’d like them if they were fresh, but MSG besprinkled pork rinds in a microwavable bag are sort of the definition of processed out the wazoo.

You notice a few look different than the others. I suspected those were the pork rind old maids. To be sure, I tried  to bite into one and couldn’t. Which also confirmed my suspicion that pre-microwaved pork rinds are a lot like ogre toenail clippings.

By the way, I initially only bought one bag (99 cents!) and then realized this post wouldn’t be complete without a picture of what the insides looked like. So I went back to buy some more and they weren’t by the counter any more. I felt rather sheepish about asking as I had two small children with me who were already clutching bags of ramen noodles to their scrawny chests. I have my pride, you know?

Anyway, I found them clipped to a display of chips so if you want some, look there.

And yup, looks like a whole bag o’ ogre toenails to me.

If you like pork rinds and would like to have nice, warm, fresh from the microwave ones, you can probably get these at a lot of stores but if you can’t, Amazon sells them. (note affiliate link, proceeds go to buy more food for me to try. Don’t feel like you’re obligated, though, my scrawny kids are just on a raw ramen noodles kick, we have other food for them, too. Fancy food like blueberries even!)

Or, getting in touch with my Southern heritage

Can of green boiled peanuts

This is the first food post I’ve made since getting my new DSLR camera. I still have no idea how to use it but it doesn’t seem like the photos are any worse than what I was doing with the point and shoot, so I feel like we’re off to a good start. After I figure out how to make it take a picture every time I want it to, then I’ll work on framing and composition and focus. Actually, I realized I don’t think I will master manual focus until I start wearing my glasses all of the time and not only when driving. Pah.

But enough about me, let’s talk peanuts.

By brine they mean really salty water. The can says that these are the South’s favorite snack but I have my doubts considering I’ve lived here for ages and ages and nobody has ever offered me any.

I really just included this picture so I could say ha-ha they said Effingham. Reminds me of the Amster Amster Shh shh shh song.

Effing

Effing

Ham ham ham

I didn’t say that naughty word, I didn’t say that naughty word.

Anyway, if anyone is live in Effingham I come visit.

I did take the peanuts inside to cook them but didn’t get a picture because honestly it wasn’t worth cleaning my cooktop to take one.

Before I cooked them, I must note that this one made me feel quite queasy

And this one reminded me of a turtle poking his head out of the water, confused to find himself in the land of giant nuts.

Cooked and drained. Note the smell was not pleasant, however it was neither strong nor overpowering. I had to bend down to get a whiff.

Some opened nice and neat and others smooshed and broke.

I made a fishy!

And the taste? Really salty. Mealy. A hint of peanut taste but the texture was all wrong. Sort of like a lima bean and a peanut had a salty, slippery skinned baby.

I didn’t find it horrible and I imagine they’d be much better fresh. Don’t believe I’ll be snacking on them regularly but if offered, I wouldn’t turn them down.

I bought this can at Dollar Tree. If you can’t find them locally, you can order them boiled green peanuts from the Margaret Holmes website or order from Amazon. (affiliate link. I have to pay for my Dollar Tree habit somehow)

Have you ever tried boiled peanuts? What would you say is the South’s favorite snack?

PS Notice how I am classy and didn’t make any boiled nuts jokes. That is because women still know how to be ladies here in the 901.

Or, your standard banana injected with bacon enhanced peanut butter then fried in butter and topped with some brown sugar sludge

Easing back into posting after the blogcation I found necessary after blogathoning and it seemed like a quick recipe would be the perfect way to sneak back in here.

I’m not the first person to call some mixture of peanut butter, banana and bacon The Elvis but this is the first time I’ve done it and posted it on my blog.

This idea began to take hold in my head after I saw this Nutella stuffed banana and wondered if I could do the same at home. I didn’t have any Nutella and am not mad about it like some are but I did have a jar of Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter and a package of thick sliced apple wood smoked bacon.

Step 1 Fry up bacon and make biscuits so that the family doesn’t suspect anything is up.

Step 2 Hide a couple of pieces of bacon

Step 3 Pretend like it’s time to tidy up so that the family disperses

Step 4 Crumble a half slice of bacon into small pieces and mix with a spoonful of peanut butter

Step 5 Make a hole in the banana. I wasn’t sure how to do this so I decided to use a turkey baster. It did a pretty good job of hollowing out the banana without ripping it.

Step 6 Try to get the bacon peanut butter into the banana. This would prove to be more difficult. I realize now, too late, that I probably could have stuck it inside a sandwich bag and cut a hole at the end to use as a piping bag.  Instead I figured the turkey baster had worked so well in getting the stuff out that it would work equally as well at putting stuff back in.

No, not really.

You can see that although I did manage to stuff the banana, it was not nearly as pretty as the one in the site I linked above.

This was about the point when my husband caught me and slowly walked away, completely unexcited about the prospect of sharing a peanut butter and bacon stuffed banana with me. I think it’s because he’s foreign.

So I tasted it, and it was good, very rich, very satisfying but not completely so. Something was missing, the part where it gets fried in butter.

I cut what remained into little rounds, then took the bottom of another banana that my kid had partially eaten and cut off the part he slobbered on and sliced it horizontally then cut a notch into each half, a trough if you will and stuffed that with the remaining peanut butter and bacon mixture then put it back together.

Maybe it’s a little grody to use a partially eaten banana in my recipes, but I’ve been eating partially eaten bananas for years now, ever since I started having kids, and have not died once. If you came to my house, sure I’d give you your own fresh, never been chewed on banana but you were not at my house when I made this recipe, were you?

In a non stick pan, I put a tablespoon of butter and let it melt then put the bananas inside and thought, hey, why not add some brown sugar? And so I did and cooked on each side  until nice and brown and removed from the pan.

Then there was lots of lovely brown sugar and butter sludge in the bottom, so I thought it would make a nice sauce on top but it wasn’t really in a saucy mood so I added a bit of cream and it became a softer sludge, but still not sauce so I decided screw it and put dollops of it on top of each piece.

And I ate it and it was good. The banana was gooey and sweet, the peanut butter was rich and the little bits of bacon were like little crunchy taste explosions. If you don’t like or don’t eat bacon, it would be still be delicious without it, but I think it adds a nice touch of savory to all the sweet.

My only regret is that I did not flambe it so I could call it a hunka hunka burning Elvis love.

Or, for your Memorial Day hydration needs a light and refreshing post

Pocari Sweat

As near as I can tell, Pocari Sweat is the Gatorade or Lucozade of Japan.

I am charmed by “smoothly supplies”.

MSG = unamilicious!

Not sure if you can tell from the photo, but the Pocari Sweat was more viscious than water. It wasn’t heavy or sticky, but the mouth feel was distinctly different than water. The flavor was light and citrusy and less salty than actual sweat but more salty than say, Kool-Aid.

I thought it was good; however like Gatorade, I bet it’s something that’s completely out of your mind delicious when you’re dehydrated but just okay when you’re not. I will buy it again, but probably not that often as the 16.9 ounce bottle was $2.99 and they don’t sell it at Circle K.

You can also buy it in cans and as a powder. I am so going to buy a box of the powder sachets one day to use as gifts.

I just put this here in hopes that people that don’t read the text will think I am an important person that gets glassware from US Senators. Steve Cohen didn’t really give this to me, it was in the laundry room of the house when we moved in.

You can buy buy Pocari Sweat at Amazon or at some Asian/International grocery stores. (affiliate link – if you buy I get money for my Japanese Kit Kat fund)

Or, this one is dedicated to my friend Alex from the IHMMB fan page

Vanilla Irish Moss that went a bit sludgy

So, one of the I Hate My Message Board Facebook fans, Alex asked me when I was going to do another weird foods post. And the truth is, I have been neglecting it because my youngest one has become quite a handful during the day and has more or less stopped napping so it’s difficult for me to take photos. I don’t have any sort of lighting equipment, so I find that it’s best when I can take the photos outdoors on my porch on sunny days.

After a picture of my poor middle son’s chocolate covered face was distributed around the world when the chicken in a can post became popular, I am hesitant to have any “helpers” wander into the shots.

Anyway, Alex’s question reminded me how much I love doing these posts so I agreed and was going to buy something new but ran out of time while out shopping yesterday. Never fear, I had some drinks in my cupboard from a shopping trip last spring, surely those would be good, right?

Vanilla and peanut flavored Jamaican Irish Moss

At the top it says Big Bamboo.

Not sure why but the vanilla flavor had French writing on one side but the peanut butter did not.

As per the can instructions, I shook gently before popping the top.

I guess I didn’t shake hard enough because this is what the vanilla looked like coming out.

On the other hand, I also didn’t wipe down the tops of the cans before pouring it out even though I remember my husband telling me about some disease you can get from rats pissing on the top of beer bottles.

So I guess it being chunky style saved me from certain rat piss death because I certainly didn’t take a big chug (although I am writing this just minutes after taking these photos, so who knows what the future will bring?)

But! As I am fully committed to being a grody food blogger in my own half-assed way, I did the famous finger dip, as previously seen in such posts as pork brains in milk gravy, and had a taste.

It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good. It tasted like some weak ass diet shake. Would not buy again, would not recommend, but if I had nothing else and it wasn’t all old and gunky-style, I would have a can.

The peanut flavor wasn’t all manky.

It tasted like a thin peanut butter milkshake, not terribly satisfying and had that not-fresh flavor. Not like it was bad, despite my sensationalistic title, just that sort of flat flavor that canned foods have.

If you are an aspiring unusual foods blogger, I would highly recommend that you not just shove things in the back of your laundry room cupboard for years on end then get desperate for a post and try to taste it. It will just make your job harder.

Sometimes you’ll even have to totally pass on opportunities like I did with this Korean drink. Note: I remember buying this sometime before we bought this house…the two year anniversary of our moving in will be 2 years this July. Notice how the level of the soda has gone down.

I decided not to try this because it seemed to be pushing it a bit, what with stuff evaporating and all, but I will have to find another bottle because barley soda can’t be missed. I mean beer is made out of barley, right? So how bad could it be?

Or, I show my tender, hippy side

Bottle of Evergreen Farm Utterly Fresh Raw Whole Milk

Since I cheated you guys out of a post last night, we’ll have two today. Milk in the morning and heavens only knows what in the evening. I seem to have somehow had my workload doubled today so I might go really wild and take a picture of some chocolate milk or something.

Anyway, I’ve heard a lot about raw milk and how delicious it is but have never had the opportunity to buy any until yesterday when I went to the Farmer’s Market at the Memphis Botanic Gardens. Tangent: If you live in Memphis or thereabouts and have never been to the Botanic Gardens you should go because it’s awesome. If you have kids, get the membership, you’ll get your money’s worth in one week.

I know some folks say that raw milk is incredibly nutritious and others think it’s a huge health risk, which I guess is the reason why I had to buy some sort of membership to buy the milk and also explains this on the back of the bottle:

I can’t say that I’m not a bit concerned about the health risks of consuming raw milk, particularly for my children, but from what I’ve read the risks are small if you get it from a small, clean farm. Honestly though, I bought it because I was very curious about the taste.

Regular milk on the left, raw milk on the right

You are probably wondering about the champagne glasses. It’s not because I’m trying to be fancy or funny, those were the only two clean glasses that matched that are left in this kinderwelt of the damned.

The colors didn’t really show through but on the left is a glass of regular, pasteurized Vitamin D supermarket brand milk, it’s extremely white and smooth looking. On the right is the raw whole milk, it was a lot more yellow and on the top, you could see little shiny slicks of fat. Sort of like when you pour whole cream into coffee and a bit of the fat breaks off and rises to the surface before the rest of the milk and you get those oily-sheeny patches. It’s not nearly as gross as the description sounds.

Top view

You can kind of see what I’m talking about here. It wasn’t off-putting in any way, but it definately had a more rustic appearance than the supermarket milk.

Wait, I take that back, I was a teeny bit put off, but that’s because I’ve done my share of expressing milk from my own teats and the raw milk looked very much like the milk I used to pump for my own babies. I know it’s kind of silly and illogical to have second thoughts about drinking the raw milk because of that, but eh, it is what it is.

Taste it I did though and I have to say it was really good, but it had a little bit of a grassy flavor. Not as strong as goat’s milk but it was there. It was also very creamy and so rich I could only drink a bit of it. It really had a very clean, fresh flavor and I think it would really rock for making homemade paneer or ricotta.

My two littlest ones didn’t like it at all, I’m assuming because the flavor was so much more pronounced than the milk they are used to. We also had some of the raw half and half in our morning coffee and I didn’t care for the stronger flavor as it clashed with my coffee.

I will definitely buy raw milk again to use for making cheese but I’m not sure if we’ll be buying it to drink on a regular basis. I am very much looking forward to trying the butter and eggs from the same dairy farm.

Or, Happy 1 Year Anniversary Whole Chicken in a Can

One year ago today I uncanned that whole chicken. It probably wasn’t my best work and it sure the heck wasn’t my most tasteful, but in my two years of blogging it’s my most viewed post by far. As of today, it’s received 140K page views on my blog, which doesn’t include the people who’ve seen it reposted on other sites.

So, I thought I’d take some time today to celebrate that chicken and all that it has done for me, even if I couldn’t be bothered to remember to buy actual candles.

I made this gelatin mold because I wanted to see what it must have looked like stuffed inside that can. And the answer is some sort of decrepit sea turtle.

I think my husband is reluctant to trim the azaleas because he doesn’t want the neighbors to see what I’m doing on the porch. And really, who could blame him?

After “Ewwwww” a common reaction was to wonder what was on my son’s face in one of the photos. The answer is Mo’s Bacon Bar. I’ve become much more vigilant about making sure that my kid’s aren’t in my grody food pictures. I have to admit that there was something rather disturbing about a small, partially cut off, smeared with some substance face in the background of this chicken oozing out of a can but it would have been nicer to let that pass without mention.

That’s one of the most important lessons having a post go viral like that taught me – you can’t control what other people will think or say, only your reaction to it.

I also learned that the more counter-culture and/or alternative the forum, the more EWWWWW they were about the chicken. On the other hand, the many gun and survivalist forums that discussed this had some pretty valid points about the practicality of such a foodstuff.

I learned that the larger the average sig file and dancier the average avatar on a forum the shorter and less insightful the post, as a general rule.

It kind of hurt my feelings but I realized that most people don’t read my words. But that’s okay because I have pay per page-view advertising on this blog.

There were a few folks that were rather hostile about my perceived lack of intelligence, creativity and kitchen skills. I was bemused by this.

I learned that a lot of the larger newspapers and website suck ass at giving credit and a link.

And I learned that it’s always a good idea to keep a sense of humor about yourself and never stop doing the things you enjoy.

So happy first anniversary chicken in a can and many thanks to everyone who has cheered me on and let me know about chicken in a can sightings in the wild and helped spread the word about this blog. I appreciate it so much!