Don’t hold it against me if I got the name of the burrito wrong. Hell, Amigo’s doesn’t even have it listed on their website. The marketing people on twitters will not approve.

So Amigo’s is located right across the street from my job and I hit them up every two to three months when I have an achin’ for something with “Mexi” in the name. It turns out that they’re debuting these new burritos, which may or may not be like Chipotle’s. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never eaten a burrito from Chipotle. On February 23rd and 24th, if you purchased a 20 oz drink, you received a free Build It Big burrito of your choice. What the hell, right?

You can choose between chicken, beef, or Pay Our Overhead (vegetarian). I chose chicken for reasons unknown. The quality of the chicken is the same as you’ve come to expect from Amigo’s, which is pretty okay. From there you decide between black and pinto beans, the type of sauce, and the other entrails. I chose black beans, salsa verde, and onion with cilantro. Each burrito is also filled with rice.

The quality is similar to that Qdoba place that you’ve been to once and haven’t been inside since. Flavors are either rubbing up against your leg or not present at all. I could taste the salsa verde sauce, but there wasn’t much cilantro and the chicken tasted like plain old Amigo’s chicken. My first bite indicated that the rice was going to be undercooked, but it turned out to be okay throughout the remainder of my burrito.

I gave it a solid “meh.”

Maybe I’m just not really a burrito person, but if someone waves a free burrito in front of your face it’s pretty hard to pass up. I don’t have any pictures because, honestly, I don’t take pictures of what I’m eating.

As with several other, formerly inexpensive (honestly, downright CHEAP) and aesthetically unappealing fish varieties, there’s some current thought being given to how to market Asian (silver and bighead, specifically) carp as desirable – and palatable.  The primary goal is to get them on the hook as a trendy food fish, and get them the heck out of U.S. waterways, where they’ve become invasive and noxious.

And lest you think it’s just a mere annoyance, consider that the new Attorney General of Michigan has named it his Number One priority.  With a $7 billion sport fishing industry on the line, it’s no wonder.  Or imagine being Marcy Poplett, idling on the river on her jet ski to look at the fall colors, and waking up minutes later, bleeding and floating face down after being hit in the face by a leaping silver carp.

So getting them from the water to the plate in order to make a dent in the population (which has no natural predators in the areas it’s invading) seems like a wise plan, in conjunction with all other efforts.  I mean, Americans may argue endlessly over whether to spend public funding on the control, but if you can make it taste good – heck yeah…we’ll eat it to extinction, right?

Foss's Crisp Paupiette of Asian Carp in Barolo Sauce

The first step toward getting chow-hounds on board is going to have to be new name – we all know what the word “carp” brings to mind, in terms of a gustatory experience – muddy, bottom-feeding, boney, and better left to catch-and-release programs.  Branding Strategy Insider found these previous attempts at new nomenclature, which met with varying degrees of success:

I got a big kick out of the break-down on Chow:  ”A Chicago restaurant tried Shanghai Bass (sounds like a sex act, let’s be honest), Kentuckians called it Kentucky Tuna (also sort of sounds … well, I don’t know, I just know I don’t want to eat “Kentucky Tuna”), and in Louisiana, wildlife officials came up with Silverfin, which is just two precious consonants away from being “Silverfish,” something you never, ever want to look at, let alone put in your mouth.”

But Bob on Idea Peep Show (Fast Horse Marketing blawg) came up with what may be the most viable alternative – Cyprinia, a riff on the scientific name.

Pretty brilliant, and he’s got a logo ready to boot!  We’re such interesting creatures, we humans, that we place so much stock in what something is called, rather than evaluating it for its inherent properties.  No wonder people actually get paid to tell us what to buy.

I’ve had a hankering for pasta for weeks now and finally caved.  Decided to make some baked manicotti and break in the new casserole dish.  Russ’s had no manicotti, no giant shells, nothing stuffable.  So I ended up going to SunMart and was actually very pleasantly surprised by both the selection of items I needed and the prices.  I know I complain about them, but really – I was impressed.  Used this recipe but omitted the butter.  Made enough for all of the shells, but I had 3 that didn’t fit into the pan, so I think I’ll just freeze the filling for something else when I need some grub in a hurry.

Stuffed and ready for the saucing.

Tomatoey goodness

Combination of Mozz and Parm.

Oven Ready!

Finished with some fresh flat-leaf parsley, and served with some garlicky cheese bread.

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Read about the mini pommes anna over on buns in my oven. They looked really good. While watching Worst cooks in America this weekend, Chef Ann’s team made pomme Anna and it looked pretty good. We decided to make them for dinner Monday night.

Pretty simple to make. Thin sliced potatoes, butter, salt, and pepper. Of course we decided to make 3 versions and tweak the recipe a little. I used the stitchgiver mandoline set on 2 thickness to slice the spuds. Melted some salted butter and coated each slice in the bowl.

Oh man, who let me type that?  I’m going to dedicate this post to my brother, the King Of Puns, and a fellow horseradish lover.

Jefe and I ran to TJ Maxx last weekend to pick up a ceramic casserole dish and discovered the European Market just a couple of doors to the North (in the same strip mall on 48th).  The very, very nice woman working informed me that they’d been there a couple of months and offered to help interpret anything that I couldn’t read on the labels.  Luckily, most of it also has ingredients in English, and the photos were pretty self-explanatory as a rule.

I honestly got hung up in the aisle of jarred, pickled goods, so I’ll have to go back and explore some more before I can give a  full accounting of what they stock, but that aisle alone had a lot of goodness to offer, provided you like pickled-type things, which I adore.

I picked up a freshly baked loaf of rye (she said they bake daily), a jar of horseradish with beets, a bag of egg noodles (for the Hungarian Beef Stew that was on the menu for the next day), and a jar of pickled pattypan squash.  Oh heavens, do I love these squash – I promptly made a snack of the bread with some butter, slathered in the horseradish, and few of the squash, all room temp.  Delicious and tangy!

There were bottles of curried catsup, jars of eggplant spreads, loads of things with cabbage, squash, peppers, and mushrooms, toiletries, staples, frozen goods,…for such a small space there was a nice variety of items without being overwhelming.

And as a side bonus, the owner told me that she was from Astonia, which reminded me of Veronica – a lovely Astonian woman I worked with in Chicago, who knit me the most gorgeous yellow wool socks for my birthday one year.  I went home and put them right on my chilly toes and smiled.

Gamer Grub is a thing I see at the video game store, and make fun of in my head every time, but have never thought to actually buy before. Until now! Available in four different flavors, Gamer Grub is targeted at gamers everywhere, so basically, nerdy shut in teenage boys. And gourmands such as myself. Touting “No keyboard crumbs/No Greasy Fingers”, Gamer Grub will help you “Boost your game”, using select vitamins and neurotransmitters, complete with science to back up their claims.

15 browser tabs, 11 apps, voice chat and two games running. We couldn’t find a snack that could keep up… so, we made our own. Gamer Grub® is a delicious performance snack packed with essential vitamins and neurotransmitters to keep you focused and quick. Just “Tear N Tilt” into a pack of Gamer Grub® to multi-task and game… no greasy fingers.

The four flavors available are Pizza and BBQ (savory), and Smores and PB&J (sweet). I told my local game store guy to give me two, and to surprise me. He gave me the Pizza and the Smores. The pizza flavor is “a zesty blend of cheese curls, tomato almonds, sesame sticks, pita chips, fried onions, and pizza cashews”. It’s not really that far off from a basic Chex Mix or Gardettos or such. Flavor-wise, if I were to compare it up to pizza, it does taste vaguely like those frozen Totinos pizzas you get for like a dollar. As a snack, it’s really not that bad though, I would eat this, if I could overcome the shame of going anywhere and asking for “Gamer Grub”. Nutrition-wise, there are approximately three servings in a pack, but the sort of people who buy this kind of thing probably don’t pay attention to that, so I’ll do the the math. 480 calories in one pack of this stuff. There’s about 27g of fat in a pack, so that’s a minus, and nearly a gram of sodium. Vitamin wise though, it is surprisingly packed with them. 60% of your day’s Vitamin A, E and C. So if anything, at least you’ll get your vitamins during your game of Call of Duty.

The smores flavor is “a sweet and rich blend of Smores bites, marshmallow chips, graham bites, and chocolate gems”. This blend I found a little more… unsettling… than the pizza flavor. Those little white marshmallow chips have an off-putting taste, and the overall taste of the mix is a little unfresh. Perhaps this is why the guys at the video game store laughed when the clerk picked it out. The nutrition facts for a pack declare 420 calories, 18g of fat, and 180 mg of sodium. So it’s a little bit “healthier” than the pizza flavor. However, it only has 45% of your day’s Vitamins A, E, and C, so it loses out on that front. I don’t think I liked this flavor as much as the pizza one.

As for the claims of being easier to eat than other snacks, Gamer Grub certainly isn’t greasy, which is a plus, but does leave a dusty residue on your fingers. I tried the aforementioned “Tear N Tilt” method, and the resealable package really doesn’t make pouring it into one’s mouth that easy, so that’s out. However, my keyboard seems no filthier for having eaten this stuff while typing this review.

Gamer Grub is a moderately tasty and vitamin-packed snack, but by no means “healthy”, given its amounts of fat and sodium. At $2.49 a package, it wasn’t terribly expensive, but I think there are better snacks I could have gotten for that price. Like some fruit or something, which I feel I should eat having ingested Gamer Grub. I sincerely doubt this will have any impact on your video game playing, but as a casual gamer, perhaps I’m not one to judge. It’s a lofty goal, Gamer Grub, to revolutionize video game snacking. I hope you reach that dream.

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That jug of marinade from the smoking gun will get used eventually, but it might take a while because I did not need to use that much of it. I went with my usual raute and blended up a whole red bell pepper and some spices. After I had dehydrated it and tasted it I was really impressed. The flavor was close to how mine usually turns out, but I noticed I did not add any salt and it did not matter. Sucky bagged some of it so it lasts a bit longer. mmmmmmm

Staring at two lonely eggs in the fridge this morning, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull breakfast for el Jefe and I out of that.  Started scavenging around the kitchen and lo and behold…the Spam with Bacon I bought a few months ago when I was making musubi.

So, scrambled the eggs with the two tablespoons or so of sour cream left in a tub, plus a little water and s/p.  Sliced the Spam really thin and fried it up crispy golden brown in a pan.  Found a bag in the freezer with about 20 tater tots at the bottom.  Nuked them for a minute to thaw, chopped them into rough quarters, and fried them up in some butter.  Grated some cojack over them when they were done.  Last few slices of rye bread toasted up…ta da!  Peeled up a Cutie fruit that I was given at work yesterday in lieu of juice and it was time to break our fast.

Eggs, ham/bacon, cheesy hashbrowns, toast and fruit.  Not too shabby for scrounging up a meal on a holiday!