Pardon me, but is this horse meat?

This week’s topics include my continued transformation into a Mexican woman, homemade tamales, even the WF has a horrible (aka vomit-inducing) meal sometimes, and the Tebowrito!

The WF is turning into a Mexican woman.  As noted in prior blogs, I’ve been cooking a lot of Mexican food lately.  I absolutely love making Mexican food.  Fresh and bright flavors with as much heat as you want to put in it.

I recently wrote about a pork chile verde I made.  I’ve now moved on to homemade tamales.

Yes.  You read that correctly.  Homemade tamales.

I’ve made tamales with green chile black beans, red chile pork, green chile chicken, and green chile pork.  On a recent Sunday, I spent all day preparing about 4 different fillings.  The following weekend I made tamales.

Here are some photos of me making the pork filling and assembling the red pork tamales.

The review?  Fabulous, though tamales clearly take a while to master.  We’ve all had relatively fresh tamales.  However, there is nothing quite like tamales straight of the steamer.  The masa has this creamy texture.  Frankly, it starts to dry out the longer they sit.  The fresher, the better.

The key to tamales?  Getting the right texture for the masa.  Too wet and it won’t stick to itself when you fold the tamale.  Too dry and you can’t get it off your hands while making them.  You need it just right……..

And, yes, I used lard rather shortening.  Does that surprise you?  Traditional recipes call for lard, not shortening!

                                                        

A Truly Vomit-Inducing Meal.   Recently a colleague of mine and I were driving through rural Arizona for a business meeting.  We decided to stop for a greasy breakfast to soak up the prior night’s festivities. 

The night before I may have hypothetically gone toe to toe drinking Jameson’s with an Irish gentleman in his own pub.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.  I know what you’re thinking, but we’re not here to judge, people.  I’m a weak man for a guy with an Irish brogue, copious amounts of all things Jameson, and his own pub.  And no, it’s not a man crush.  Why do you ask?!

By the way, 30 year old Jameson is a fabulous whiskey that’s also really expensive.  Not my favorite, but a hell of a whiskey. 

Back to the story.  The idea was to stop for a greasy breakfast to sop up the hypothetical whiskey from the night before.  So we stop at the Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff, Arizona.  I’ve eaten at some Cracker Barrels in the past and while I’ve never been terribly impressed, they’ve also usually been an adequate source for your basic greasy breakfast. 

Not this one.  When you first walk in, you are overwhelmed by the stench of potpourri emanating from the gift shop that you have to walk through to get to the restaurant.  It reminded me of growing up in Mississippi and being surrounded by Southern Baptist women on their way to church on Sunday.  Overwhelming floral smells.

I ordered the chicken fried steak and my friend D (aka, Sippy Cup) ordered French toast.  These seemed like good choices.  I ordered chicken fried steak from the quintessential white trash restaurant and D ordered French toast, which anyone can make with their eyes closed. 

We were horribly wrong.  I take a bite of my steak and barely get past the taste of chalky made-from-a-powder-at-best white gravy before the texture and flavor of the ‘meat’ hits me.  It was akin to horse meat left in the sun during World War I which was then frozen for posterity’s sake and thawed just in time to make my wonderful breakfast.  I ate 3 bites or so and pushed it away.  Even I, the Wannabe Foodie and full-fledged goat, could not eat this wretched meal and keep down my vomit.

Surely the French toast was better, right?  Wrong.  It was equally bad.  Seriously – how do you screw up French toast?  I don’t know, but I think the bread wasn’t soaked enough and the bread they used was not made for French toast.  It might have been some odd sourdough or something similar.  Plus, I think it was stale.  It was not vomit-inducing, thought it was really bad. 

By the way, D finished a fair amount of my ‘steak’.  He’s from Nebraska and clearly has a, shall we say, different pallet then mine.  He agreed it was atrocious, and then kept eating it.  Go figure. 

I will eat anything and have had more than my share of bad to awful meals.  This meal was among the top 3 all-time worst meals I’ve ever had.  It might even have a shot at the title.

Now this is what a breakfast should be like!  During a recent trip to Denver, I met my friend J for breakfast at Sam’s # 3 in downtown Denver.  This place was featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, so I’m thinking it should have some promise.

At first glance, it looks like your basic 70’s style diner.  It could easily be in Pulp Fiction.  Frankly, not all that impressive.  I like it already.

I sit down with J and peruse the menu.  As I’m prone to do, I ask the server if they have any specialties.  “Yes.  Our special breakfast burrito has scrambled eggs, chorizo, tater tots and macaroni and cheese.  It’s topped with our homemade pork green chile verde.”

J and I share a look of “She had me at tater tots, but macaroni and cheese as well?!”

We tell the waitress that it sounds awesome and that we’ll take 2.  I also asked her how in the world someone came up with such a concoction because it sounds like something a bunch of stoners would concoct at 2 a.m.

“Dude!  I want a burrito with … like with some eggs in it.  Do you have any chorizo?  Righteous.  Add that too.  You know what else?  Tater tots!  And, do you have any macaroni and cheese you could throw in there?  Maybe put some of that green sauce stuff on top?  Awesome….”

This thing was awesome.  Check out the photo. 

And, yes, I fell into a food coma shortly after eating it.

Happy Cooking.

WF