Archive for the 'Cheese' Category

Snow storm snacks

Published
by
Chalupa
on December 19, 2008
in Cheese and Food
. 3 Comments

After seeing my coworkers enjoy some hotdogs from Ramon’s on Wednesday, and having a couple of loaded dogs myself yesterday, I decided to make a couple of my own for my breakfast/lunch.  Work today was called off yesterday afternoon due to the impending snow storms of death but I’m still able to get work done by watching help desk queues, etc.

So anyways, here are my hotdogs.  To start, heat those dogs up.  They’re no good cold.  Then put em in the buns, add some chopped onions, and green peppers, cheese it, sauce it, and then they’re good to go.

Hot Dogs with onions and peppers
Cheese and sauces added
Side shot


Thanksgiving Cheer

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 26, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking, Food and Story
. 0 Comments

Nothing warms my cockels like getting out of work early.  This morning I had hardly arrived before I was told I should head home.  That’s OK with me.  I was able to get groceries, clean up a bit, do laundry, and even try out a new grilled cheese idea - but before I get to that I have a warning.

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR LOADED MINI-VANS FULL OF KIDS AND A “Warning unsociable homeschoolers aboard” YELLOW CAUTION STICKER ON THE BACK!!

Yeah, on my way to Market Basket this van full of kids cut me off, cut some other people off, and peeled into the little Dunkin Doughnuts.  You know, the one in the parking lot for Market Basket.  Apparently homeschooling your kids means you also endanger their lives while striving to feed your coffee addiction.

So back to the grilled cheese.  While at aforementioned store I picked up some tuna.  I’m a big fan of tuna and cheese baked on the ol torilla.  Why not inbetween bread?  I eat tuna sandwiches all the time.  So I buttered up my bread, applied cheese, tuna, and then some more cheese.  It was amazing.  I suggest you try it sometime.

Scottish Eggs

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 16, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking and Food
. 7 Comments

I’m not exactly sure when we started talking about these at work.  Either Marquis or Mike brought them up one day.  These consist of hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage and deep fried.  Doesn’t that just sound absolutely amazing?

So I tried making them today.  They turned out to be much larger than I expected.  This is partly due to the fact we only had the jumbo eggs and the fact the sausage wasn’t completely thawed in the middle so there were some larger chunks of meat.  The deep frying was a little tricky because we didn’t have enough oil for the eggs to be completely submerged.  We ended up putting some of them in the microwave for a tiny bit after we pulled them out of the oil.

It’s probably hard to tell exactly how big they ended up.  I’d say they were slightly smaller than my fist if that helps.  They were also quite filling.  The “traditional” recipe doesn’t call for cheese or ketchup to be added, but I couldn’t really resist.  With or without, these are really quite tasty.  in the last two pictures you’ll see I melted some New York Sharp Cheddar on top of half an egg along with a little sauce.

Caution!: Eating Scottish Eggs may force you to take a Thanksgiving style nap afterward.

Blue Cheese experiment

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 6, 2008
in Cheese and Food
. 2 Comments

Some of you know I love cheese.  Really love cheese.  I picked up some Danish Blue the other day, and it’s definitely the strongest blue I’ve ever had.  A lot of times you eat some blue cheese and you hardly see any veining in it.  The stuff I got is probably 80% blue and 20% white.  I melted some on top of chicken the other day and tonight I made a grilled cheese with some in it.

Knowing this was going to be strong, I also included some New York cheddar.  That’s a bit strong all by itself.  It makes my face barely twinge when I eat it.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite strong enough to balance out the blue.

I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.  I’m trying to think of some innovative ways to use this cheese and not be forced to find something to wash that taste out of my mouth afterwards.

My first good lasagna

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 1, 2008
in Cheese, Cooking and Food
. 1 Comment

With the Olympics over and done with, there’s not much to watch on TV anymore, with the exception of the election brouhaha.  Tonight I decided I was going to make a lasagna.  A good lasagna.

I’ve tried this in the past and it’s never been anything I’d really want to share with anybody.  One daring thing I decided to do was use pepperoni for the meat.  One reason being I had no sausage or hamburger and chicken seemed just a bit too daring.  Here’s my ingredients.

  • 2 jars of Newman’s vodka spaghetti sauce
  • 1 pepperoni stick (it was over a foot long)
  • 2 tubs of ricotta (16 oz each I believe)
  • 1 lb shredded mozzarella (man-up and shred your own)
  • mushrooms (don’t know how many/much I had)
  • 1 box of lasagna noodles

So the first thing you need to do with store-bought sauce is beef it up.  I’m not talking about tossing some meat in there, I’m talking about adding some herbs and spices.  I always add some garlic, oregano, and basil.  Sometimes I toss other things in there.  Prepared sauces are always too bland for me.  You should also do this in a pot on simmer.  I think the heat helps loosen everything up.

While my water was starting to boil I shredded my cheese, sliced my pepperoni as thin as possible, and then washed and cut my mushrooms.  If you have one of those egg slicer things, they work great for this.  You’ll get nice, uniformly cut mushrooms.

After the noodles were done I drained them and let em cool for a couple minutes.  Then I started putting everything together.  Some people will tell you a lasagna needs six layers, or seven layers.  I never really care how many there are.  I just try to use up all my noodles if possible.  I did noodles, sauce, mushrooms, pepperoni, ricotta, mozzarella, and then started over.  I kept doing that until I filled up my baking dish.  You should also put a hefty layer of cheese on top.

I then cooked it at 350 degrees for about an hour.  I also made some garlic cheese bread with a fresh Italian loaf, some butter, garlic, and freshly grated Romano.  That went into the oven for the last 10 minutes.

I thought it turned out pretty well and Liz was also a big fan.  Didn’t take any pictures, but we had a copious amount of leftovers, so maybe I’ll snap a picture later on.

Bacon-wrapped Meatloaf Casserole

Published
by
Chalupa
on June 17, 2008
in Cheese and Food
. 2 Comments

I’m real big into comfort food.  I love meat, cheese, and potatoes.  I call it manfood.  I grew up eating what my mom would call Meatloaf Casserole.  It’s meatloaf with a layer of mashed potatoes and then cheese on top.  It’s pretty stellar.

Since we’re moving in a week, we’ve been trying to eat up all of our food.  One way I could do this was make the aforementioned dish, and incorporate bacon.  That should work, right?  Bacon tends to make every meat more awesome - even bacon!

I thought a while about what to do with the pork.  I could work it into the meatloaf, actually wrap it around, put it into the potatoes, put it on top…..I finally settles on cooking the bacon the day before and then chopping it into about 1/2″ to 3/4″ pieces and sprinkling them on top of the meat before I slathered on the potatoes.

I guess the short of the story is that it turned out to be a success.  I think Liz was a little skeptical at first, but she enjoyed it too.

Pizza Hut’s new crust…

Published
by
Chalupa
on February 4, 2008
in Advice, Cheese and Liz
. 1 Comment

isn’t worth being called one. It’s being labeled as CRUNCHY! and CHEESY!, but it only really falls under the first category if you ask me.

Last week Liz and I ordered one. I always eat faster than her so I had 3 breadsticks and two slices down before she had gotten to the crust on her first piece. I asked her what she thought about it and her response was something like, “Parmesan? I think they accidentally use crap-esan.” That’s right folks it’s TERRIBLE. I love cheese. I eat it all the time. I’ve had several varieties of parmesan both grated and sliced. Pizza Hut’s new creation doesn’t taste like anything I’ve ever tasted. It even smells bad. If you’re into cheesy crust, please, for your own sake, stick with the stuffed crust.

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

Published
by
Chalupa
on January 29, 2008
in Cheese, Life and Story
. 0 Comments

You might recognize this from a particularly excellent movie; a movie I wasn’t able to fully appreciate until I saw an even greater film, Ghost World.  Tonight I tried to have a delicious and enjoyable dinner.  I decided I would eat some of those left overs in the fridge.  That chicken tasted really funny so I let the garbage disposal have its way with the offending poultry.  I then decided I would eat the last of those fries Liz made.  They were even worse off than the chicken.  My last attempt was the chili.  Bad News Bears - if you know what I mean.

It’s at times like these, when I need some relaxing times, I have to go back to my roots.  I have to stick with what I know.  Beef Franks.  That’s right.  I got out a plate, placed two hotdog buns down, inserted the Beef Franks, applied cheese to the top of both, and microwaved for 1.5min.  Afterwards I garnished with ketchup and mustard.  I won’t even go near saying they’re anything as amazing as a wiener wang, but since I don’t live in Japan I can’t exactly get my hands on some Suntory.

Lunchtime woes

Published
by
Chalupa
on December 4, 2007
in Cheese and Cooking
. 1 Comment

You know how sometimes you’re just having one of those days and you’re looking forward to something good to eat?  Well I didn’t get to take off for some lunch until about 2:15 today and I went home to make myself a nice sandwich.  I got out the bread.  I applied ample portions of mayo and mustard.  I went to get out that ham or turkey or whatever it was……to find there was no thinly sliced deli meats to choose from.  I had eaten all of it.  So what do my wandering eyes rest on?  None other than old reliable.  Oscar Meyer wieners.

I deftly slid two out of the plastic, cut them in half, applied cheese and pickles to my sandwich, microwaved my concoction, topped everything off with a hefty serving of ketchup* and it was delicious.  A delicious, tangy hotdog sandwich.  What more could I have asked for?

*If you don’t know how much ketchup constitutes a hefty serving, I’m sure Tara could help you out.

Good Weekend

Published
by
Chalupa
on October 15, 2007
in Cheese, Funny, Liz and Story
. 0 Comments

Besides going partially deaf for one day Liz and I had a great time back in Iowa.  We got to see almost the whole gang, I went to Harris twice, got some Whitey’s, saw Tyler’s new house, saw Josh’s new house and even watched an episode of Dr. Who.

One interesting moment was at Harris with my mom we ordered a pepperoni and pepperjack, the usual, and the waitress kinda looked at me for a moment.  She said, “Pepperjack….cheese?”  The next night Liz and I went with Josh and Erin back to Harris for round two.  This time we got sausage and pepperjack.  I was relating the story from the previous night and even pointed out the waitress.  Our waitress for that night comes over, we tell her what we want and shes says, “Pepperjack….cheese?”  It was pretty hard not to laugh.  I looked across the table at Josh and almost started busting up laughing.  Luckily I held it in.

What else comes in pepperjack?  We looked at the menus and under toppings it says, “Pepperjack.”  There’s no “cheese” after it or anything else.  I felt like saying, “Oh, it comes in cheese?  That sounds awesome.  I’ll try that.”  Unfortunately we’ve all grown up and we aren’t sarcastic and obnoxious to wait staff anymore.