The Lynnster Zone

babbling since february 1997

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The Thanksgiving Crab

Posted by Lynnster on December 5, 2008

I don’t remember where I’m stealing the idea behind this post from – I think I read and responded to someone talking about it in someone’s comments somewhere last week – but I was in total agreement with it.

Why couldn’t the Pilgrims have looked to the sea, instead of the land, for their Thanksgiving feast?

I know, I know – I KNOW the answer to the question and the Indians and the harvest and being thankful and land and blah blah blah and all that.  I’m just saying I really, really wish the Pilgrims had done that instead.

They were right there by the danged sea.  There must have been lakes and rivers (and heck, ponds!) nearby.    Couldn’t the Indians have taught them how to fish instead?

I am not, and never have been, a big fan of turkey.  Most of the rest of the usual Thanksgiving fare, I like just fine, but the turkey is usually the least eaten thing on my plate.  Most of my favorite Thanksgiving dinners have been the ones where there was ham as well as the turkey.

And then there’s the dark meat thing.  Put any branch of my entire family together – there was only one person who liked the dark meat.  My father – who’s been gone many years now, and really, even before that, pretty much since my parents divorced twenty years ago, and I usually spent holidays with my Mom and family – there’s nobody to eat the dark meat.  It’s useless, except to give to the cats and dogs (obviously they like that idea).

Post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches (with lots of mayo) are fine – for about a day, maybe two, then I’m over it.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat the after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches at all.

The turkey was fun the one year when dinner was over, and my Dad put the carcass and scraps out on the deck for all the then-outside cats we had at the time.

A few minutes later, we were a bit shocked to see the carcass appearing to walk by itself across the yard.  The female cat who was, over the years, often referred to as “The Turkey Monster” was a great deal smaller than the carcass, so that was a pretty hilarious sight.

But turkey – for me anyway – just sucks.  I know the difference between good turkey and mediocre turkey and bad turkey – but I could almost just about eat cardboard instead, really.

On the other hand, seafood – now THAT’S a Thanksgiving feast I could love.  Lobster, crab, salmon, scallops – yum.  There’s really no seafood I don’t adore, except clams.  I’m a little picky about fish, but most fish is okay.  Heck, give me a Thanksgiving catfish or a Christmas catfish!  That would be A-OK with me.  Thanksgiving catfish, Christmas lobster, Easter salmon – oh, yes!

So, I think that one day – if I ever evolve out of extended adolescence and actually become the kind of matriarch that is the cooker of all Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) feasts – I will begin the tradition of the Thanksgiving crab.

In more ways than one, I’m sure.

(Although I really would have been even happier if the Mayflower had drifted down to the Gulf of Mexico and landed in far south Texas near the border instead.  Thanksgiving fajitas, Christmas quesadillas, and Easter tamales – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!)

(And no, I don’t know why I included Easter in the above.  Every good white Anglo-Saxon Protestant knows you have ham on Easter instead of turkey.)

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, cats, fun with food, holidays, lynnster's zoo | 6 Comments »

Dum-Dums, I Hardly Knew Ye

Posted by Lynnster on November 4, 2008

So I’m not going to talk about the election anymore because really, again, I’m sick to death of it.  And I’m trying to lighten up the mood around here a little, or else Mack is gonna start calling me “Debbie Downer” instead of Rachel.

So I’m going to share with you some new discoveries on one of my FAVORITE subjects today – hard candy.  And when I say hard candy, I don’t mean Sarah Palin, nope.

I haven’t had any trick-or-treaters for years, but I wasn’t about to get caught on Halloween without candy just in case there were some this year.  I almost made the mistake of picking up some nasty cheap yucky stuff I would have hated for $1 a bag, but decided to wait until the next store or two that day.  Because, you know, if I don’t have trick-or-treaters and I buy candy, it might as well be something I like that I will consume eventually.

The next store saved the day with a $2 bag of Dum-Dums – 80 of them.  Yay.

If you’ve read here much, you are well aware that while I don’t much care for chocolate and am not big on sweets as a rule, I have a serious thing for hard candy, mostly on the sour side but a few others.  Jolly Ranchers, Icebreakers Sours, those old Charms Sweet & Sour pops you can barely find anymore – those are the best.  But Dum-Dums have always come a close second.  I just like lollipops period – the Jolly Ranchers suckers are some kinda awesome.

But wow, it must have been a long time since I bought any, because I started pulling suckers out of that bag and was just amazed.  Where did all these new flavors come from?  Coconut, mango, cherry cola, bubble gum, cotton candy – I am in hard candy taste heaven!  (Except for the cherry cola.  I don’t care for that one so much.)  Mom said it sounded like they are trying to match some of the Jelly Belly flavors (which I like as well); probably so.  There along with all the old standards like root beer and tangerine and cherry, and the (slightly newer but I’d had it before) blue raspberry, were all these marvelous new flavors.

I was about to get upset there for a few minutes, though – and was concerned they had stopped making it – but finally fished a cream soda Dum-Dum out of the bag.  Yay!

So there ya go.  I might be basically penniless and destitute and barely able to afford to buy real groceries in the current economy of this Presidential election year, but if I can manage to keep a $2 bag of Dum-Dums on hand, I won’t really even notice if I’m starving.  Ha!  OK, I AM Debbie Downer, sue me – I don’t have anything anyway!

Posted in blogfolks, fun with food, other obsessions | 4 Comments »

Anorexia Jetsonia

Posted by Lynnster on October 10, 2008

I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, which I guess has been kind of obvious.  And I hate that, because I have let something slip by on the music blog I absolutely did not mean to, but maybe I can get myself sort of re-motivated into things next week.

Anyway, no, I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, and apparently I’m not in an eating mood either.  Which is kind of bad when you only eat maybe once a day and sometimes not anyway, which is kind of good when you’re almost too poor to eat anyway, but I know it’s not good and healthy to only eat maybe once a day and possibly even not.

I DO get hungry.  It’s just that there’s nothing I want to eat, and if there is, after two bites I’m over it.  Stuff I have eaten and liked my entire life – I don’t want it and/or it doesn’t taste good.  Everything is just totally blah.  In a way it’s a good thing that I don’t eat much when I eat anyway, but it’s just kind of disturbing to get two or three bites into something and just be like totally unable to finish.

The only things I really want to eat are breakfast food or Mexican food.  But the way things are going – even though I’m too destitute to be able to go out to eat – if I COULD go eat at Cafe Ole every night this week, I’m afraid by night #2 I would be over that too and not want that either.   Or Waffle House.  Which is totally unimaginable to me that I could go in either and not feel like eating anything on the menu, but there ya go.

I was kind of jonesing for some Pancho’s today and like I said, Mexican food is one of the few things that sounds good these days.  So since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I picked up fixings for nachos and grabbed some Pancho’s dressing too and that pretty much satisfied the craving AND I did actually eat and it was good.  Except I ate so little and there’s so much left that I could probably eat for the next week… and now I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose my appetite for the one thing I always have an appetite for.  Plus I ate so little, but so way much more than I usually do, so now I’m stuffed and miserable.

I bought some bananas today because they looked good and appealing – which I’m sure I will eat.  I like fruit, I just don’t buy much because normally most would wind up going to waste.  Maybe I should just buy fruit for a while.  But what if I start not wanting to eat fruit either?

Weren’t things supposed to be like The Jetsons by now anyway, where you just took a pill and bam, that was an entire meal, and we all fly our cars around instead of driving them and – right?

Posted in blogstuff, fun with food, in my head, quirky or abnormal?, updates to the zone | 2 Comments »

Double the Horror, Double the Poverty

Posted by Lynnster on September 4, 2008

Last night was depressing.  I went to the grocery store.

Back in the spring, I mentioned that I had noticed a lot of the things I pretty much HAVE to buy on a regular basis had gone up relatively significantly.  Well, now (in just the past week or two), they’ve gone up AGAIN.

40 lb. bag of (store brand) dog food – up from $7.99-8.99 in April 2008 to $13.99.

20-ish lb. bag of (commercial) cat food – up for around $11 to $15.

Box of (store brand) dog treats – used to be two for $2, now $4 ($6 somewhere else for something similar).

Kitty litter – I always buy cheap kinds and store brands because my cats simply usually prefer them.  The store brand cat litter at my usual grocery stores is now costing what Tidy Cats, Fresh Step, etc. USED to.

All totaled, well over $15, possibly even up to an additional $20 a month or so if you’re a pet owner.

So yes, that is all pet stuff and I suppose some people would scoff that pets are a luxury (even though they’re the only “kids” I have).  So let’s look at stuff for ME.

Nearly all the food and personal items I buy for myself are, these days, generic and store brands.  Nearly all of THEM have increased in cost similarly.  Thank goodness I don’t habitually eat very much or often – which is bad, I know – but the simple fact is right now I couldn’t afford to eat TWO meals a day, much less three, so right now my borderline eating disorder is a blessing.

One of my preferred easy quick cheap meals is not so cheap anymore.  Formerly 89 cents, I discovered just over the weekend the price had gone up to $1.09.  And now it’s gone up to $1.29 SINCE the weekend.

Here was the real shocker for me, though.  I actually noticed this at another store last week, but thought maybe it was just one of those things, since I was at a retail drugstore where things sometimes are higher than they are at, say, Kroger or Wal-Mart.

But no.  Angel Soft toilet tissue, usually acquired for $1 or less per four-roll package many places – now pushing $2, at $1.85.  This isn’t Northern, this isn’t Charmin, this isn’t Kleenex – it’s ANGEL SOFT, for goodness’ sakes.  Granted, even if I had lots of money I’d probably buy it anyway instead of the others.  I like it just fine, think it’s great anyway, and after what a plumber once told one of my best friends after a thousands-of-dollars plumbing repair job, I probably will buy it forever (well, if I can afford to).

And I have long lamented the high cost of feminine hygiene/protection products for years, as that is something most women HAVE to have on hand and cannot do without, yet even the store brands are often horrifically expensive.  I have always considered that one of those things that’s just simply not fair and borderline sexist.  Fortunately I stocked up on that stuff a few months ago with the generous gift of a kind friend of a Wal-Mart gift card.  I am NOT looking forward to seeing what that stuff costs when I’ve depleted my current stock.

But seriously – do you see what I’m getting at here?  This is GROCERIES, people.  This is generic and store brand people food, as well as pet food.  This is “lesser brand” TOILET TISSUE, for Pete’s sake.

And most of it’s nearly DOUBLED in cost in just the last four months.  100% inflation, folks.

Gasoline prices were bad enough, and I realize they have decreased somewhat (at least temporarily).  It still sucks that I have a compact car and it costs over $50 to make a two and a half hour trip to my hometown there and back, and that I’m 42 years old and my mom has to send me the money if I want to come home for the weekend.

But this – this is groceries – and TOILET TISSUE, for crying out loud – doubling in cost.  What happens next year?  Tripling?  Quadrupling?

I can’t afford any of it, and my income is tentative enough as it is.  What really sucks is that I’ll still be owing taxes next year on what pitiful, way below average “poverty level”, amount of income I have actually earned this year.

All I’ve been hearing about lately is people getting laid off, hundreds here, a few there, hundreds more over there.  I suspect few of you reading right now could tell me you’ve gotten a raise this year that’s helping to offset this incredible rise in not only cost of just living, but cost of necessities.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here lately.  I don’t know how many times I’ve asked this in the last five or six months, and I’m getting kind of tired of asking it and wondering about it at this point, but anyway…

Where does it stop?  When does it end?

You want my vote in the Presidential election?  Then tell me it is going to stop, and where it’s going to stop, and when it’s going to end, AND make it happen.

Preferably before we’re all homeless and out on the street, starving, and having to tear up family Bibles and dictionaries and encyclopedias because we can’t afford to buy four rolls of toilet paper.

Posted in blah, cats, dogs, fun with food, in my head, lynnster's zoo, my so-called life, the economy sucks | 6 Comments »

Back Yard Burger Retraction

Posted by Lynnster on July 30, 2008

I have to take back the mean things I said the other day about Back Yard Burger’s new (fairly new) Loaded Potato Skins. I complained that if they were going to call them “loaded”, they should have something besides just cheese & bacon bits tossed on ‘em. Like sour cream, and/or chives, etc.

Well, when I went to the mailbox today, the usual weekly advertising circulars were stuffed in there and included a page full of coupons for Back Yard Burger. Including a coupon for their Loaded Potato Skins.

I glanced at the accompanying photo and immediately noted… the cup of sour cream. On the side.

Which someone obviously forgot to stick in my bag the other day.

Posted in fun with food | Leave a Comment »

Mountain Dew Revolution – From F to A in 5 Minutes

Posted by Lynnster on July 26, 2008

I was at the store late last night and needing a cold drink, and there was no orange soda in the refrigerated soda case, so I was looking around and noticed something I had never seen or heard of – the new Mountain Dew Revolution, with wild berry flavor and ginseng.  It’s blue, which is usually a tipoff that it’s either really bad or really good.

So I get home and take a swig and immediately hated it.  Seriously was grading it a big fat F, not even a D.  It tasted like carbonated cough syrup.  But I didn’t have anything else cold to drink in the house, so I was going to finish it anyway.

Then a funny thing happened about 1/4th the way into the bottle.  Suddenly, it started tasting good.

I don’t know.  It would certainly never be a favorite, but it’s all right (after the initial couple of swigs anyway).  It’s sort of similar to some of those energy drinks I don’t really like all that much but there’s something about them that tastes both good and not so good.

So if you haven’t tried it and want to give it a shot, be forewarned, but stick with it past two or three drinks.  The carbonated cough syrup effect kind of goes away.

PS: New music blog here.  (LOL, yes, I’m going to keep repeating that for at least a week or two.)

Posted in endorsements, fun with food, thumbs down, thumbs up | 2 Comments »

O Onion Rings, O Onion Rings (and a Note About Back Yard Burger)

Posted by Lynnster on July 24, 2008

Speaking of Buchanan, Tennessee – and to lighten up the mood in here a little bit, much needed after that last post – I am really just about to die for a plateful of Bull Durham’s onion rings. I haven’t one in my mouth in about 35 or so years, I guess, because it’s been gone about that long.

Bull Durham’s was a restaurant down at Kentucky Lake that was pretty much your regular steak and seafood kinda place, but the onion rings – oh, the onion rings. They just, literally, MELTED in your mouth. They weren’t all packed with breading like the ones you get at Sonic; just lightly battered and browned, and yeah, they just melted in your mouth.

Back Yard Burger just started carrying onion rings a little while back and they are very, very close. In fact, I just had some for lunch, but while they’re close, they’re just not like Bull Durham’s real deal was. Ah, some days I would just about kill for Bull Durham’s onion rings and a dish of Pagliacci’s lasagna, another Paris restaurant that has been gone just about that long.

Speaking of Back Yard Burger – I don’t know how long they’ve been on the menu, but don’t bother with the “loaded” potato skins if you like your potato skins loaded, ‘cos they’re not. I don’t know who came up with the brilliant idea that loaded potato skins means just slap some cheese and bacon bits on ‘em, but they are sadly missing a key ingredient that would truly make them “loaded” (i.e., sour cream), and some chives would be nice too, but I’m not that picky.

Posted in fun with food, thumbs down, thumbs up, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

Ladies Who Lunch

Posted by Lynnster on June 29, 2008

So today I met up with KathyT, her sister, and her youngest daughter for Huey Burgers (except Melissa had the Huey’s Club, the rest of us had the original Huey Burgers) and just had a fabulous time visiting with them. It’s always great to see Kathy, and her sister Karen is just delightful and funny as well. Melissa’s a really cool kid and is going home with a huge trophy – and is also getting her braces off soon, I hear. (Man, I remember that was one of the best days of my life, getting those things off for good after three long years.)

They had thought about going to Graceland but had decided not to, but they wanted to go to Mississippi since Karen and Melissa had never been, so that was a sort of easily solved two birds killed with one stone. I hopped into the van with them after lunch and we took off down Bellevue, which becomes Elvis Presley Blvd. and then becomes just plain old Highway 51 at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. (Well, I guess it’s always Highway 51 anyway, but you know what I mean.)

So yeah, we went to Southaven and then even on down into Horn Lake, where Kathy bought a new headlight and the cute guy at Advance Auto Parts installed it for her even though he really didn’t want to.

Then we came back to Memphis, having driven past Graceland on the way down, but since it’s on that side of the road coming back – yeah, we pulled into the pull-off and got out and walked around the wall and gates a bit. Karen took a picture of me and Kathy and Melissa under the National Register of Historic Places sign that I hope will be so bad (because it no doubt will be of me, they always are) that Kathy won’t put it up on her blog. (Haha, just kidding… I think.) And Kathy took a bunch of pics of some of the graffiti on the wall.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and thanks once again to Kathy for lunch & the company, I had a great time. And my dogs thank her profusely since virtually none of us finished our entire burger/sandwich or fries (I almost ate my whole Huey Burger but not quite), so Kathy sent me home with a literal doggie bag LOADED with french fries and what probably amounted to almost one entire Huey Burger or almost. It was a feeding frenzy the likes of which you usually only see in the wild on the Discovery Channel, Dobie almost took one or two of my fingers off.

What was really funny, though, was Daisy was the only one smart enough to figure out what I’d brought home in the box I was holding when I walked in the door. The boys were completely clueless (*rolls eyes*).

It was a gorgeous day in Memphis today, and since I was in the neighborhood I drove by my buddy Joey’s house thinking if they were outside I’d stop and say hey. But they weren’t, so I just headed on home after a stop off for needed Krogering.

By the way, I actually have a piece of Graceland in my possession – a piece of rock/stone that I think came from a walkway, I don’t think it came from the wall. My mom wound up with it when she was down here in college, I think a friend of hers actually did the actual deed, but yeah, it’s a piece of Graceland circa around 1961-63. Heh.

Posted in blogfolks, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are good, fun with food, memphis, travelin', west tennessee | 1 Comment »

Ouch!

Posted by Lynnster on June 17, 2008

So I got one of the new Fruitista Freezes at Taco Hell today because it’s like a million degrees outside in Memphis today. I got the just Strawberry instead of the Strawberry Mango, ‘cos sometimes mango doesn’t taste too good to me.

I give it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up, even with the half dozen ice cream headaches that came with it.

The Squirrel Queen claims that one can relieve brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, adding that it warms the nerve endings there that cause the ache. And Rachel agreed with her. But I dunno about that, that sounds awfully weird to me. I’ll try it next time tho.

Posted in a bit accident prone, endorsements, fun with food, squirrel queen tales, thumbs up | 3 Comments »

Yummy

Posted by Lynnster on June 8, 2008

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.

Posted in BBQ, a family thing, fun with food, in my head | 5 Comments »

Bits & Pieces, Or Just Bits ‘Cos I Don’t Have Time for the Pieces Right Now

Posted by Lynnster on May 26, 2008

There’s just really no time to be spared, so pardon me for this hit & run update.

1. A little while ago, I ate a cheese Krystal – because I was badly in need of food that I could get quick and didn’t have to cook and it was 3 in the morning – and it was unbelievably, horribly, terribly, awfully & ungodly bad. I have never had a Krystal that tasted that disgustingly, putridly bad in my life. Yes, I realize that Krystals are not haute cuisine, but come on – it’s a Krystal. How can you screw up a Krystal that bad?? If I die in my sleep here in a little bit, you’ll know what happened. Blech. A shoe sole would have tasted better I think.

2. I’ve been eating entirely too much fast food lately anyway, which is kind of okay because I never eat anyway and all I ever get is, like, one little McDonald’s cheeseburger, and they’re all of a dollar and I DO NOT HAVE TIME to cook. But let’s not talk about the fact that in the past two weeks I’ve been served (A) a cheeseburger that was between two top buns, and (B) got home one day and opened the bag to discover I had a top & bottom bun with cheese in the middle – and no burger. Wake up, people! I know it’s just an unimportant $1.00 cheeseburger, but it might just be someone’s only meal of the day that you totally screw up.

3. I know I shouldn’t have laughed because they’re both elderly and one’s a little sickly and might be a bit senile, but watching not just one but two of my cats fall off the desk a few minutes ago, within a few minutes of each other, with an empty chip bag (the small 99-cent Big Grab size) on their heads was almost as funny as a few years ago when my elderly then-16-year old cat got his head stuck inside an empty Krystal Chik box.

4. On a not-as-amusing note, Maggie’s (same Maggie as in the pic above) new favorite place to nap is with her head on the edge of my keyboard, which usually eventually occurs to me at some point after being puzzled as to why I’m typing in all caps or ““““` is appearing on the screen again.

5. I am apparently now completely and totally assimilated into the electronic communications world at this point, because now that my fax AND my printer are both borked, and a fax that I needed to get where it needed to go so I could start getting some commission payments didn’t go through because that dinosaur of a mid-’90s era fax that I inherited from my old office is totally dead now… it took about a month for it to finally occur to me that I could just put a stamp on an envelope and MAIL it.

6. Besides the petered out fax and printer, now my desktop is apparently on its last legs too – I’ve known it was coming, was hoping to hold it off a little longer, seeing as how that’s pretty distressing since I do 100% of my work on this computer these days – but it spit out a frightening serious error at me the other day and threatened to not start (but it eventually did). In the course of seeing what I could afford to ditch in an effort to get it speeded up a little and prepare to defragment the drive for the first time in I dunno how long, after going through some other directories, I took note of the millions of Notepad files I’ve got saved to the desktop – and had a bit of a chuckle over the title of some of those files, such as: CLC Links Widget, WP Tutorial, Moved Blogs, kathyt, kathyt Links Widget, More Moved Blogs, B Blogger Template, one simply titled B, B Tutorial (yes, I don’t remember why I felt I needed to make her her own instead of giving her the one I gave everyone else), and Sarcastro Stuff (which reminds me yet again that I STILL need to repost all his old photos one of these days, ugh). Anyway, giggle – yeah, I’m a blog geek.

7. There are angels in the blogosphere and in my MySpacesphere too. Angels, I tell you.

8. I’m so tired I don’t have time to BREATHE, and I don’t have time anyway because I have way too much work and projects to do. This staying up for a day and a half at a time, sleeping a few hours and starting all over again is getting a little old. I’ve been up again for about 38 or 39 hours now and worked straight through for about 22 well, really about 29 or 30, of those, so yeah – ’scuse me if I’m a little loopy right now.

That is all. But seriously, if I don’t at least show up for a minute on Twitter by tonight? Food poisoning. Ugh, a nasty, dirty, filthy shoe sole would have no doubt tasted better. Yuck.

9. (Yes, Lesley and Brittney, I know I shouldn’t eat meat anyway.)

10. (But still – it’s a Krystal! How can anyone screw up a Krystal??)

11. Zzzzzz…

Posted in blah, blogfolks, blogstuff, cats, friends are good, fun with food, i never sleep, lynnster's zoo, my luck sucks, my so-called life, techgeekchick stuff, wordpress | 6 Comments »

In Search of the Perfect Chili Pie – The Update

Posted by Lynnster on April 23, 2008

Yum, that was good. Needed more onion, though. I was a little too conservative with the chopped onion (that almost killed me while chopping it, and normally I don’t get weepy when chopping onions but that sucker was superstrong). I thought I had already put too much in and it turned out not to be enough, will just toss every bit of onion I have left in tomorrow probably.

And note to self about just going ahead and biting the bullet and buying real Fritos corn chips next time. The Kroger version, they were way too salty, and I like salty, so if I think it’s too salty then there’s way too much salt.

Other than that, perfect. Maybe even BETTER than Sonic’s chili pie if I get the above noted changes right in the future.

Sometime in the near future when I can afford to splurge a little bit at the grocery again, I have every intention of trying this recipe out. Every time I read it, it makes my mouth water, yummmmm.

The dogs are having 98 cents a big box saltine crackers for treats instead of their usual generic Milk Bone treats right now, but like they care. You know people food is WAY better than dog food anyway, and considering some of the stuff I’ve seen several of them eat (except Daisy, who is perfect) that I didn’t intend for them to eat, crackers are an improvement over, say, paper towels or cardboard.

Posted in dogs, fun with food, lynnster's zoo, my so-called life | Leave a Comment »

Chili Pies, Pickle-Os, and Why Living in the City Sucks Sometimes

Posted by Lynnster on April 23, 2008

Fast food joint Sonic’s expansion has been far and wide in the last 20-25 years, but those of you who have always lived in the cities and never lived out in or grew up in the more rural boonies of West and Middle Tennessee like ‘Coma, Lindsey, a few others and myself have likely don’t know, and that would be:

(A) What a good Frito chili pie tastes like, or -

(B) What Pickle-Os are, and if you do, you’ve likely never had them the way they’re supposed to be.

The Sonics down here in Mempho actually do have chili pies (at least they did last time I looked, which has been a while), but they’re not right. They’re just not made right, and they’re just not very good. I have often thought that the Sonics here need to send their cooks to rural Northwest Tennessee to learn how to cook some of this stuff correctly (not just the chili pies).

Sonic here (or at least the one nearest me) tried to do Pickle-Os for a little bit too, but evidently they didn’t go over so well and soon got removed from the menu. And no wonder, because they weren’t making them right either – for one thing, not near enough batter on the things, and they just weren’t good. (In case you’re wondering, Pickle-Os are fried dill pickles, but you probably guessed that already.)

I also got into an argument with the employee manning the order system one day when they did offer Pickle-Os, who insisted that they could not possibly be made with cheese on top of them. She insisted they would be too soggy.

Well, not if they were cooked RIGHT to begin with. I know this for a fact because I’ve been eating Pickle-Os with cheese (and correctly made Frito chili pies) for well over 30 years now. The Sonic in Paris opened somewhere around 1976, 1977 or thereabouts, when I was still in elementary school. My friends and I pretty much lived at the one in Camden when I was in high school – probably much to the managers’ and cooks’ dismay, since we would do things like order Regular Cheese Coneys without the hot dog, Dr. Peppers with a lid (because otherwise you got no lid on your cup), and write checks for 54 cents for a soda. And at one time or another, I probably ordered something at every other Sonic in West Tennessee outside of Memphis over the last 30 years.

One of my best friends since school days swears by the power of Pickle-Os with cheese to cover up any smell of alcohol on one’s breath, which was always one of those good and important things when you’re 16, 17, 18-ish and especially if one’s parents were hypervigilant about such things. Mine weren’t, so it didn’t matter to me, but his were and he swore by that fact.

Anyway, I KNOW my Frito chili pies and Pickle-Os with cheese, the latter you can’t get down here in the city anymore anyway. And I’ve come to terms with the fact that no Sonic down here will ever learn how to make a decent and proper chili pie. So sometimes I get a craving and think, “Oh, man, that would be soooo good right now,” and just have to fight it because the nearest Sonic that can probably make a chili pie correctly or even has Pickle-Os is probably at least an hour’s drive away.

So I tell you all that to now bring up the fact that today, I am about to make what still won’t be right, but will be close enough, to what a real chili pie should be, and I’m very happy and excited about it.

Even in my presently sorry financial state (and thanks to the recently discovered Kroger gift card that had never been out of my luggage since Christmas), I’d say this is not too bad. I’ve got enough stuffies to make two, maybe three, chili pies (three days’ worth of meals for moi who hardly eats anyway). Probably the biggest score of all this is (since I don’t really cook anyway), I FINALLY found some storebought chili I can stand – most of it’s either just too salty or too gross for my tastes – so that’s basically what led to all this chili pie planning.

So I got two or three days’ worth of fixins, at about $2.50 for the chili, $2 on sale for Kroger sharp cheddar cheese (which honestly, I’ve gotten to where I prefer it to the name brands anyway), $1.19 for the Kroger version of Fritos – which will probably be fine – and 24 cents for a little onion. So around six bucks for two or three days’ worth of food that will hopefully staunch my craving for a decent and proper chili pie for a while, but should at the very least be plenty tasty enough.

I’m maybe a little more excited about all this than I should be, but I don’t care. And off I must go now, there’s a chili pie to be made!

Posted in fun with food, my so-called life, tennessee in general, west tennessee | 6 Comments »

Yep, It’s That Time Again

Posted by Lynnster on April 13, 2008

So I’m here to tell you that yesterday, April 12th, was National Licorice Day.

WTF???

You know, it’s been my experience that most people don’t even like licorice. I like cherry and strawberry Twizzlers okay, but that’s about it.

No offense to the licorice industry, but wow, I just don’t know what to think about National Licorice Day.

By the way, today (April 13th) is International Plant Appreciation Day. Even though I have a black thumb, I think I can appreciate a plant a little easier than I can licorice. So go appreciate your plants, people! No charge.

Posted in fun with food, holidays, weird wild & whoa! | 7 Comments »

Bits & Pieces – The Sequel

Posted by Lynnster on April 10, 2008

(1) Skittles Chocolate Mix – Well, I’m a big fan of Skittles in general (especially the Sour and Tropical), but as many know, I’m not a big fan of chocolate. (It’s “okay”.) So I wasn’t really expecting to like Skittles’ new Chocolate Mix that much, but I sure did expect to like it more than I do. With flavors like S’mores, Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter, you would just think they’d be better than they are. The Brownie Batter ones make me cough. Real chocolate fans will probably love them though.

(2) Dogs with Little Dreadlocks – Enough said about that, but if it would just (A) stop turning cold or (B) stop raining…

(3) No No No No NO Tornadoes! - Speaking of the above, it’s a gorgeous day out right now and feels REALLY nice outside even though it’s about 100 degrees in my house, and I am so sick of rain. So the news from Channel 2 Weather this morning regarding potential tornado activity here in the west is a bummer, and I don’t deal well with the sirens nowadays. Go away, tornadoes, shoo!

(4) The Beanie Army – Tojo, my cat who terrorizes the rest of the house and lives in the guest bedroom otherwise (but he’s such a sweetie when it’s just me and him), has a new project going too, I noticed. As I’ve mentioned before, since no other animals in the house want to be friends with him, he has made all of my old Beanie Baby and Teenie Beanie cats and dogs that were back in the bedroom his only friends. (As Churlita called him, he’s “resourceful” like that.) Yesterday I noticed he’s got them all lined up, almost in single file, down one entire side of the bed back there. I wonder what this means?

(5) In Hiding – Also, wonder where I put my W-2 and 1099? Hmm.

Posted in about the weather, cats, dogs, fun with food, in my head, lynnster's zoo, natural disasters, thumbs down | 6 Comments »

Bits, Pieces, & the Like

Posted by Lynnster on April 3, 2008

(1) Somebody (Jag? Aunt B.? I can’t find it now) wrote about these a while back and I was covetous and waiting for them to appear on Memphis grocery store shelves. Finally they have, and now I can NOT stop eating them because they are the best thing EVER:

(2) I just got back from a 24-hourish trip to Birmingham. I drove through a monsoon in Mississippi to get there. Got there and Alabama was, like, sunny and warm and had been all day. Today it was like 78 degrees and felt as humid as any June day in Tennessee. I get back to Memphis and not only am in rain again but immediately have to change into a sweatshirt because I’m freezing. Grrr.

(3) Trying to decide if I should be worried about Dobie having eaten a few Nair wax strips, but considering all the other dangerous, ridiculous, and just plain gross things he has ingested in his 13 years on the planet, I think probably not.

Posted in about the weather, blogfolks, dobie is a dog, dogs, endorsements, fun with food, lynnster's zoo, memphis, thumbs up, travelin' | 5 Comments »

It Makes No Sense

Posted by Lynnster on March 6, 2008

Right this moment, I’m torn between jonesing for some Krystal Chiks, and the possibility of going and hugging the porcelain god due to some weird wave of nausea that suddenly hit me a little while ago.*

Yeah, I don’t understand it either.

* (No, I am NOT pregnant.  No way no how.)

Posted in fun with food, in my head, sick as a dog | 3 Comments »

In Which All the Lipton Green Tea with Citrus is Half Frozen, So I Evaluate A New Product

Posted by Lynnster on October 9, 2007

RE:  New Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash

What it is:  Lemon-Lime Soda “with a splash of cranberry” (and caffeine free)

Verdict:  Not impressed.  I am thinking this is one of those things that might only be good with some alcohol added to it.  But I say “might” because…

Helpful Hint:  Whatever you do, do NOT add coconut rum to it.  Ick.

Posted in fun with food, thumbs down | 6 Comments »

Open Letter to Wendy’s

Posted by Lynnster on August 13, 2007

Dear Wendy’s,

I am relatively certain that if one goes to France and orders Chicken Cordon Bleu, one will not find a slice of American cheese anywhere on the plate.

In a word – YUCK.

Lunchless and unhappily yours,

Lynnster

Posted in blah, fun with food, thumbs down | 13 Comments »

Food for Thought

Posted by Lynnster on May 16, 2007

I wanted to hurry up and get this food meme done because I was tagged by Merrie Olde England’s most ardent Big Orange supporter, The Vol Abroad, who is likely going to be going into labor just about any minute now, so I wanted to finish this before she winds up knee-deep in nappies and such and still has time to read.

This one’s all about your five fave places to go out to eat in your own general locale. I find myself kind of grasping here because most unfortunately, nearly all of my very favorite locally owned, non-chain places in the metro Memphis area have closed – some long closed now, some relatively recently. Cafe Roux, The Fish Market, vegetarian joint Babylon Cafe, and five legendary Memphis haunts – Gallina’s (Italian spinach to die for), the Buntyn Restaurant (Southern home cooking and the best yeast rolls ever), and Captain Bilbo’s, Pappy & Jimmie’s, and Anderton’s (all seafood) – all gone.

So here are my five still alive & well in Memphis:

  1. Paulette’s on Overton Square in Midtown - Best Sunday brunch ever, with the world’s most delicious crepes of all kinds, strawberry butter for your croissants, and what would Sunday brunch be in the South without a Mimosa? (Well, unless you’re doing the Bloody Mary thing.) Brunch is awesome, though I pretty much have crepes of some sort there no matter what time of day it is.
  2. Cafe Ole’ in Cooper-Young – The ex and I dined there the first week it was open (now quite a long time ago) and for a few years after probably ate there once a week at least. It’s still a fave place to go and fave meet-up place for me, having met up there with Hutchmo, and ‘Coma & Squirrelly on a couple of different occasions last winter. One of the reasons we used to go so often in the early years was because it is very vegetarian-friendly and was a fave of a vegetarian friend of ours, and my mom and I used to go pretty much anytime she was in town (for the shrimp, see next sentence). Decent Mexican Tex-Mex type fare, and the bacon-wrapped stuffed shrimp are to die for.
  3. Huey’s (all over but the original is in Midtown) – Legendary in all its dive-y goodness, anyone who lives in or visits Memphis regularly will likely regale you with the virtues of the Huey Burger if asked. It’s one of those things that people just tend to crave. Whether the original or one of the many variations, it’s dependable – you can always count on it to be exactly the same every time. The potato soup is also excellent, and they had stuffed jalapenos before everyone and their brother and the grocery started carrying them, and these are done RIGHT (though the East End Grill’s are pretty great too).
  4. Brother Juniper’s College Inn off the Highland Strip – I actually haven’t been here in quite some time, but that’s mainly because I am rarely up in time for breakfast, which is what anyone should go for. It opens at 6:30 a.m. now, but I think back in the days when the ex and I used to hit it for breakfast it was open even earlier; it was a frequent stop before long road trips for us, including when we drove to Kansas City to see the Hoodoo Gurus in ‘91. The breakfast fare is just so indescribably good, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. The biscuits – you would not believe.
  5. The Rendezvous, Downtown, and Corky’s (several locations, but the original on Poplar in East Memphis) – I’m cheating here by putting two restaurants here but (A) surely I couldn’t do this without mentioning BBQ, and (B) I am partial to both. And lots of you outside of Memphis are familiar with Corky’s since it has branched out to many other locations statewide and nationally and therefore it’s actually a chain now, but since it’s a Memphis original, I’m keeping it here. It’s my meme and I can do what I want! So anyway, yeah. I love both for different reasons – for dry ribs made with dry rub, I prefer the Rendezvous; wet ribs with lotsa sauce, Corky’s. And the Rendezvous is a Memphis legend and has been there forever and the atmosphere is pure Memphis, you just can’t beat it. I love to take first-time visitors to Memphis to both when possible.

Now here’s where I make up two more of my own categories, because I can:

Honorable mention of places I’ve been to: Zinnie’s East in Midtown – for the spinach nachos, which I haven’t had in a very long time but now my mouth is watering just thinking about them. If you’re a spinach lover, you won’t be disappointed. Yum.

Honorable mention of places I’ve not yet been to: Memphis Pizza Cafe on Overton Square, Midtown (other locations too) – Practically everyone I know, including Lesley, loves it and I’ve been thinking for years I’d get down there eventually, but just never have. Maybe sometime when Lesley is in town again I’ll break my missing streak on this one and we’ll meet up there for lunch.

OK, so now that we’re basically done, here are the actual rules and regulations for this particular meme:

1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you (if you get tagged for it, you can probably copy and paste it to make things easier – I did). Include the state/city and country you’re in:

Nicole Tan (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
Yianna (Athens, Greece)
Melusina (Thessaloniki, Greece)
Vol Abroad (London, England)
Lynnster (Memphis, Tennessee, USA)

2. List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location with as much or as little info as you’d like to share. (See above.)

3. Tag five other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they’ve been tagged.

Since I’m interested in places I might wanna check out someday (who knows!) or already hit on occasion, I’m gonna tag five people I know stop by here fairly often and are from different places, and going to just choose one Nashville/Middle Tennesseean. Most of my Nashville area friends seem to be hot spicy food fans (which I wish I could but cannot do) so I’m just going to select somebody else at random, and skip East Tennessee altogether (no offense but I already am familiar enough up there). Take your time if you get tagged, no hurry. Here goes:

  1. Megan can probably tip me off to some good Nashville/Middle Tennessee spots.
  2. Churlita (I might need to know where’s good to go in Iowa, you never know)
  3. Margaret (seeing as how I am in Birmingham rather frequently tho not as much lately, good info to have on hand tho)
  4. Kathy P. (traveling to St. Louis is always a possibility when you live down here)
  5. And Sara to cover the Wild Wild West.

Posted in BBQ, fun with food, memes go here, memphis, thumbs up | 10 Comments »

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