Salad Days

How about a little food bloggin' this afternoon?

I've been feeling like cooking some real food lately, instead of just living on cereal and sandwiches at home and eating the better stuff at work. For some reason, the food in the employee dining room, which used to be wonderful, has turned especially sucky in the past month or so. Of course, I can still get made-to-order stuff from the grill, but there's only one cook that I trust with my food, and he doesn't come in until around 10pm every night.

So yesterday I was in the mood for a salad before I went to work. I started with the basic salad mix-in-a-bag that I bought the other day, chopped up some sun-dried tomatoes (I like them better than fresh ones in just about everything), added some chopped ham and grated cheese, some herb and garlic croutons, bacon bits, mushrooms, chopped olives, and topped the whole thing off with a dollop of Litehouse Ranch with Jalapeno. Oh hell yeah. Not bad for rabbit food. Of course I was burping jalapeno ranch all night at work, so there were some unfortunate side effects.

I was finally getting hungry again around midnite, and for some reason I can't figure out, they break out the prime rib in the middle of the night for the employees. So during my 1 am break I was happily munching on a thick slab of prime rib with horseradish and a scoop of mashed potatoes. That held me over for the rest of the night.

Instead of having breakfast this morning, I waited until around 1pm and spent some quality time in the kitchen mixing up some more tasty vittles. I chopped up an onion and some mushrooms, and sauteed them with some fresh garlic. In the meantime I seared some nice lean boneless porkchops I still had in the freezer, compliments of my friends Becky and Terry sending me a stash from Omaha Steaks last year. Once the chops were nice and golden, compliments of my favorite cast iron skillet, I added them to the veggies and topped the whole thing off with a can of cream of mushroom soup and let it simmer for a bit. While that was cooking I made some fettucini alfredo and put some biscuits in the oven.

It all came together perfectly and I feasted while reading the morning newspaper. I would've had wine with the meal--it just seemed like a meal that needed white wine, but 1) I have no wine glasses and 2) I only have one bottle of Chardonnay on hand and I forgot to chill it anyways, and 3) wine shouldn't be drunk alone.

But the best part, I think, is the leftovers. I didn't eat half of what I made (there were four pork chops), so I've got another fine meal on tap for the weekend.

While rummaging around in the freezer, I found that I still have a box of Omaha Steaks Sirloin Burgers on hand, too. So lunch next week is taken care of, too.

Speaking of food, I've re-evaluated my position on Food Network 'hottie' Giada de Laurentiis. She used to be one of my favorites, but now her show is just unwatchable to me. The porn-director closeup shots of everything is annoying by itself, but her ridiculous over-pronunciation of Italian words irritates the hell out of me. It's even worse when later on in the same segment she pronounces the same word in American English--it just makes her seem like a pretentious buffoon. So she's no longer allowed on my tv or in my kitchen.

Of course, if her career goes south and she's forced to do Skinemax movies to support herself, I'm not above watching that...

Mikey