Red Lobster Redux

I didn't eat anything all day and I was starving by the time I got out of class at 4:30, so I went out to eat.  I decided to go to Red Lobster for the first time without having the all you can eat shrimp.  I was thinking of getting just something small, I was hoping they had some kind of soup and sandwich deal because I was curious about their clam chowder.  I don't think I've had it there and I consider mysellf a connoisseur of them.  The menu at Red Lobster is pretty limited.  I guess I could've ordered an appetizer.  It looked like they started selling their lobster nachos again.  There's a little symbol that says "New" above it about I think they just brought it out of retirement.  I would've gotten but I didn't want to fill up my bad food quota so early in the week. 
Anyway, I just ordered off their daily fresh fish menu.  I think Anthony Bourdain said to not eat fish on Monday because restaurants get their fish on Thursdays for the weekend so the restaurant is basically trying to get rid of it on Monday.  Not sure if that counts for a place like Red Lobster where who knows where they get their fish but whatever.  Man, eating fish is an expensive proposition.  I always though Red Lobster was like the Sizzler or Olive Garden of seafood, like it was a running joke that the food was mass produced and thus cheap.  But it's about 15 bucks for a half portion of red snapper.  Yeah a half portion is what a normal sized portion should be, the size of a deck of cards, but still disappointing for some reason.  I guess I'm too used to eating all you can eat shrimp there for about the same price.  The fish was decent enough.  I got it grilled but it might be better broiled because it was a little dry.

Potato tacos

Here's another thing I made a while ago that I was too lazy to post on.  So I had a hankering for potato tacos one day.  I first had potato tacos while in a Spanish class with good ol' Ms. Fajardo at Santiago Canyon College during the Summer.  Everyone had to do a presentation in Spanish about how to cook something. "Cut the onions"  "Mix together" etc., relatively simple stuff.  Ms. Fajardo brought in potato tacos for everyone and did a little presentation on how to make them.  Even cold they were pretty great.  I tried making them at home but I suck at frying.  I don't have anything the technique or why it's not bad (thanks Alton Brown).  I just feel weird about using up so much oil to make one dish.  I know professional fryers say that the flavor of fried food is better from used oil and actually put used oil in new batches of oil, so yeah I know you can reuse oil but it's just awkward to me. 

Anyway, I just tried shallow frying these tacos, where basically the oil only goes up about half way up your food instead of completely covering it in deep frying.  I ended up burning most of my first batch but a few tacos made it out unscathed.  I didn't remember if flour or corn tortilla were more traditional, but I used flour because I figured that texture might be crispier but I don't think the flavor was there.  The potato filling was bland too, not sure if I needed to salt it more or what.  For something so simple it sure is a pain the the ass to make. 

Girls who can tenderize my meat: Camille Becerra

Here's a chef that I was in love with that was on Top Chef season 3 for a few episodes.  I thought she was absolutely cute but the sad thing was that she barely had any talking head interviews or even have her dishes show up in the competition.  She wasn't the token eye candy on the show (I believe that role was taken up by Casey Thompson that season), the token villain/pain the ass person, or token punk rocker so I guess Bravo didn't have a reason to show her.  And believe me, I went through and rewatched each of the 4 episodes that she was in before she got eliminated plenty of times.  But at least she's cute enough to show up in random modeling pictures with her doing random stuff with food, yaaah!  I remember there's a great picture of her chopping up some beef sort of sexily, which gives a guy foodie like me a hard on, but I can't remember where I saved it.  Oh well. 

Eggplant dip

Here's the first thing I've actually cooked in quite a while.  There's a supermarket chain called S-mart, which has pretty lousy prices and there isn't a great deli, bakery, meat department, or anything inside so I don't go there too often.  Sometimes I go in if I don't feel like battling the crowds at WinCo for one item or to use the BofA atm inside.  The one great thing about S-mart though is that they have a little cart full of discounted veggies and fruits that are somewhat beyond ripe.  I bought 4 avocados once for 69 cents, it was the greatest thing ever.  Yeah they were a little brown on the inside but it was still tasty.
Anyway, I saw some eggplant going for sale, but I don't cook with it very often and don't run across it at restaurants too often.  The only idea that I could think of was making baba ganoush, so I grabbed one, roasted it with some garlic and blended with some tahini I bought a few days later (8 bucks a bottle!), lemon, and parsley.  Toasted up some whole wheat pita chips and everything good to go.

Breakfast Ultra Combo

Here's an oldie that I made a while ago.  I always skip breakfast because I'd rather have those last precious minutes of sleep before I absolutely have to leave for class than eat.   So I had the idea of stocking my fridge with items in order to whip up a quick breakfast sandwich in the morning.  I cooked up a bunch of fresh breakfast sausage and froze them, froze some bacon, and froze a box of english muffins.  Eggs only take a few minutes to scramble up and I always have cheese in the refridgerator.  With all this stuff I was hoping to be cooking and done in about 15-20 minutes: stick bacon in toaster oven, english muffin in toaster, eggs in pan, microwave sausage, assemble and top with cheese.  At least that's what the vision I had in my head was, I never actually attempted making it it in the middle of the week.  Here's one sandwich I made during one weekend.  Unwieldy but still good. 

Food, food, everywhere, nor any morsel to eat

Yeah, no cooking really still.  I did spend like $40 bucks on bunch of vegetables to make myself one my mounds of salads but haven't gotten to prepping the veggies and stuff.  I went out to get some fish or seafood but I have no idea where to get that at like 8:30 at night.  There's plenty of fast food joints and Mexican places around here but I think the only place I know of on the top of my head around here is Red Lobster.  I might have to check that place out again and see what kind of healthy stuff they have because I associate that place with fried shrimp, shrimp scampi, and cheese biscuits. 

I drove around Stockton looking for a healthy place to eat at and got to see some of the seemingly scarier parts.  Like I've never seen a lot of these stores (like Rite Aid) with iron bars and gates in front before.  I ended up going to Burger King hoping they'd have entree salad but I didn't see it.  I think Burger King probably has the most convoluted menu out of all the fast food joints.  Anyway, I got the side salad which was probably the most depressing salad I have ever seen.  Just iceburg lettuce, a few slices of tomato, and some cheese.  Carrots are usually standard on these types of things but that's a bit too fancy for the King.  I also got a Whopper Jr. when I really shouldn't have.  I have no willpower.  BK has a veggie burger, which was news to me.  I've had a veggie burger before but didn't pay much attention to it, so I'll have to try it again. 

Eating/cooking sabbatical

Not to worry, I do have the blog in the back corner of my mind.  I stopped cooking a few weeks ago because it was the week before Spring break and I didn't want to have a bunch of food rotting away in my fridge for a week.  Not that I cleaned out my fridge or cleaned out the trash before I left for home, which would have been nice.  Coming home to moldy dishes in the sink and stinky raw chicken in the trash isn't fun.  But at least I didn't have any extra food lying around in the fridge.  During Spring break I just went out to all the restaurants and fast food places that I don't have easy access to while up at school.

I haven't been eating lately due to some personal and health issues. I want to shift my diet towards more veggies and fruit for my own sake but I'm still a bit lost.  I do want to take up cooking soon again because eating a lot bananas, nuts, and chips and salsa isn't exciting. Unhealthy but awesomely tasty cooking is pretty intuitive, but I'm lost for inspiration on how to make healthy stuff.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  I do have some leftover pictures to blog about I suppose.