congratulations lisa fernandes

congratulations not on being good enough to make it to puerto rico. congratulations not on making it into the final round of top chef and the chance of winning more money in one day than you would in 4 years as a chef. no. you get none of those.

to illustrate my point i will use a reference from a favorite african safari of mine. imagine you are in a jeep seeing a pack of zebras grazing in the marsh only to get spooked by a lion. the zebras all proceed to turn and run as the lion swiftly approached. they race away and quickly the hierarchy of the zebra is splayed for you to see. the fastest move with reckless abandon and escape without ever having felt the lions breath. at the back of the pack is antonia, she is the slowest of the zebras and will be the sacrifice. however, not anywhere close to the front of the pack but just barely ahead of antonia is lisa.  she is that second-to-last zebra.

she’s not a winner. she’s not even close. she’s merely a bit faster than the slowest zebra and has once again escaped impending death. congratulations on not being a the loser. you certainly didn’t win.

oh and blais and stephanie aren’t mean: you’re a fucking bitch who always has to go against the grain. you shall reap what you sow.

short hiatus (hoping for under a week or 2)

sorry folks, no time to do reviews.  starting a new gig that’s kicking my ass.  will be back soon i promise.  in the meantime keep sending me the stuff you want reviewed/and or the oddities of the food world.  it’s fun to think how far we have come/slipped over the years.  see you sooner than later.

-the rabbit

taste test: kettle chips backyard barbeque

yes, i know i have been lazy. i’ve had a lot going on and haven’t been getting you the reviews that you guys deserve. so, back again, i’m proud to bring you the latest offering, nationally that is, from the kettle foods team: backyard barbeque. i have to admit, that i am a fan of kettle chips. i actually went to about a dozen stores looking for their ‘island jerk’ flavor until i found them (review to follow). this one was much easier to come by since it was an end cap at my local supermarket. on with the review.

opening the bag: what i love about kettle foods is that they use a heavy duty bag so one thing was certain: the chips were just about whole. the smell was deep and sweet. not like smelling something cooking on the grill, but had that sort of effect. they didn’t smell of oil or potato, all i smelled was seasoning.

crunching down: typical of kettle chips is that the chips were dark, some really dark, and irregularly shaped. biting down was strong, crunchy and rich potato effect followed by the seasoning. the flavors were smokey, sweet, slightly spicy, and while i’m inclined to say tangy i just didn’t see it. okay, they were a rock solid barbeque flavor. imagine the lays barbeque chips, but only more intense flavor and better crunch effect.

overall: not much to say as they were a definite contender to be my barbeque chip of choice. they scored 9.5/10. just delicious. nothing more to say. try a bag out for yourself when you see them. it’s like splurging on a pint of super-premium ice cream: you know you want to.

taste test: lean cuisine chicken philly flatbread melt

i hear the microwave timer going off. that must mean that my total of 2:45 of cooking time is up. today we’re talking lean cuisine. why? why not. it wasn’t the annoying commercials with office women gabbing about how they would like to “eat out the center of a grilled cheese” (sexual puns not intended) that made me buy this. i just was hungry and was too lazy to go to a sub shop.

this is the latest product from lean cuisine that’s a hybrid between atkins dieting and the latest trend of ‘the public will buy anything on a pita as long as we call it a flatbread’ marketing scheme. this one purports to be a chicken philly. i’ve had many a philly cheesesteak, including a pilgrimage to the oldest 2 joints in philly. this was no philly. however it was still good overall. if they had adjusted the name i would have been pleased, but i digest.

enchilada sauce is my #2 favorite salsa for chips

now before purists jump down my throat i would like to remind you that salsa’s literal translation is ’sauce’.  so there.  now this was an accidental discovery.  my #1 favorite salsa of all time is newman’s own black bean and corn salsa, but recently we were making a recipe for enchiladas and had some left over.  it’s more like we had the equivalent of 2 bottles of sauce left over, but who’s checking account is counting?  certainly not mine.

the recipe called for an equal combination of red and green sauces and since we had a bunch leftover i just tossed it into a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap.  figuring that i would add it to some eggs and other uses, i let it sit in the chill chest.  one day i was craving chips and salsa, but alas we were out of my #1 and i was too lazy to go to the store.  i grabbed the bag of chips and dunked one into the mixed sauce and chowed down.  i was surprised to find that it was smooth, spicy, tomato-ey, a touch smokey with a hint of lime.  i really dug the flavor.  so much so that i killed the bag of chips and nearly all the sauce.  it was a winner.  and chances are if i am in the store and enchilada sauce is on sale i will grab a couple bottles to keep on hand.  it’s a smart move seeing as how 2 bottles of the sauce should cost me about $2.50 for a whole mess of sauce, or in excess of $3 per jar of salsa.

finding a job on a bell curve

finding a job sucks. honestly, root canal without any drugs or an amputation without being knocked out is easier to take. okay, maybe i took that too far. but it still sucks. to make matters worse is not just getting your foot in the door and getting the interview, but now you get to wait…..and wait…..and wait…..and wait for there to be any response. often times there’s no response at all. this can be frustrating to say the least and while i understand that the company often doesn’t make split-second decisions regarding personnel the job seeker is still left in a lurch.

i have, after many nights of not sleeping well, have come up with a theory about the probability of getting a job post-interview. here’s the scenario: let’s say that you interview on a thursday and you interview well, ask and answer questions well, and they tell you that you should hear from them in 3-5 business days. i propose we look at the idea of getting a call back on a bell curve.

we all know and hated the bell curve. it was that one geek that ’screwed the pooch’ for the entire class by getting a good score on the test. what i’m thinking is that on the two ends of the spectrum we can refer to as the length of time in days. the shorter and longer the ‘callback time’ the less likely you are to get one. however, that sweet spot is in the 2-4 day marks where the standard deviation says that the probability is best.  if they call you back in the 2-4 day area they are interested and not desperate (like calling after getting a potential date’s number).  there is a certain amount of restraint in waiting that period of time.  i say this because right now i’m sitting outside of the sweet spot and i want to tear out what little hair i have left.

now before any mathematicians or professors jump all over me for using a bell curve, it’s more of a visual aid, rather than any actual mathematical process. so there.

got bananas? make banana bread

ours were about to go south and since we paid up for them we may as well get some use of out them. it was raining and generally poopy outside today, so why not bake? i dug around for a good banana bread recipe, but needed something all fell into the ‘low-fat’ arena too. i came across this one and it seemed to foot the bill since the only ingredients i needed to buy were eggs and buttermilk.

i tweaked mine, obviously since i can’t leave well enough alone, and added some cinnamon and supplemented the white sugar with brown. it’s in the oven right now and it smells damn good. will post pics once it comes out and is not hot as hell. the real test: tomorrow. if it tastes that good, if not better tomorrow then i have a winner on my hand.

i love mine with a hit of nutella on the side.  soooooo good.  oh and if you are going to use the recipe above, add some extra banana, like half a cup, to really bring out the banana goodness.

single men with cats scare me

today while on one of my frequent trips to the grocery store i was in line behind some guy with quite a stack of goods, mostly cat food and kitty litter.  he had no ring on his finger and i was a bit frightened.  it just seems unnatural to me for a single guy to have a cat.  now, it’s not that cats scare me, nor do single guys, but the combination of the two really really creeps me out in a jack-nicholson-in-the-shining sort of way.

this guy had like 25 tins of cat food a huge thing of kitty litter and was buying frozen dinners. yes, i made the assumption, whatever, you do it too.  don’t act like you don’t.  it just creeped me out.  a single woman with a cat: no issues here.  a single guy: just wrong.  so whatever, just something i had to share.  anyone else out there get creeped out by seemingly random things?  i hope it’s not just me.

nutritional information: an inconvenient truth

it’s no secret that americans have a weight problem. more than that we have a denial problem and a ‘it’s not my fault that i’m fat’ problem. we like to blame others. we like to sue others. what we have failed to do is accept responsibility for our actions and change course to correct them. however in attempting to help others work with issues regarding weight i am perplexed as to the lack of support by nutrition labels. okay, follow me here. in the u.s. we use the standard tables for weights and measures: pounds, ounces, gallons, tablespoons, etc. this is crazy confusing to the average user. i have a culinary degree and at times it’s confusing to me. the remainder of the world uses the metric system: grams and liters. that’s it. nothing more. if it’s weight, it’s measured in grams and if it’s volume, it’s measured in liters. here’s the thing though, u.s. nutritonal labeling is done in grams. this causes much confusion for the simple fact that 99% of people don’t have any idea what a gram looks like (save for drug dealers) and only know what a liter looks like because it’s so close to the quart.

here’s where things go south quickly: we have to do math when looking at nutrition labels and that brings us back to the lazy part: we won’t do the math. okay, okay, before you attempt to chastise me for going off like this, i will back up my findings in some upcoming posts (more on that later) and look, most specifically, at sugar. why sugar? because we all have a frame of reference for sugar, in what it looks like and how much it should/shouldn’t be. this can give you a rational look at what a gram is you can use it to enrich your lives. sugar is in just about everything (save diet sodas and whatnot) even the buns at fast food restaurants.

here’s a quick one for you: mike and ike’s (the rabbit’s #2 favorite candy, btw) have 1 gram of sugar per piece of candy. what does this translate to: each piece is equal to roughly 1 teaspoon of sugar. so that means if i’m having a serving of mike and ike’s (23 pieces or 40 grams, however you want to look at it) i am putting down the equivalent of 7.66 tablespoons of sugar. yes, that’s tablespoons, for those keeping track at home. it took a bit for that to settle in, seeing as how i put down almost an entire box, which is about 7 servings.

what i will do over the course of a few posts is look at various food items, not just candy, and show you side-by-side the actual measured sugar content of a serving, can, bottle, etc when put next to the actual product. it was alarming to me and possibly will be alarming to you. i’m not saying to go out and get on the south beach diet or anything, but in taking it from a pro i hope to shed some light on difficult issues.  stay tuned for future deets.  that is all.

taste test: burger king flame broiled potato chips

i’m just gonna put it out there, the flavor term ‘flame-broiled’ is fairly ambiguous and could mean just about anything. the ketchup and fries flavor seemed rather straight-forward by comparison. however, before ripping into the bag, i’m going to make the assumption that the ideal taste they are going for is like biting into a fresh whopper. that being said it’s now time to close my eyes and open my mind. here we go again.

in the bag: the chips are uniform, again. this time instead of being like fries but thinner, they are perfect circles (like a burger). i bet some manufacturing genius got a sweet bonus for coming up with that connection. the smell really is no different than a regular bag of barbecue potato chips. i am underwhelmed so far. really nothing more to see. i am eager to get to the taste.

crunch time: my first thought is that is does, in fact, taste like a burger from bk.