Testing Schneider's Honey Garlic Chicken Wings. #fritz

#fritz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the Boss for a gift card valid at Metro and Food Basics.

We’re testing out the Schneider’s Honey Garlic Chicken Wings, which were on sale, ostensibly, in the flyer for this week.

We picked up a head of Romaine lettuce, (nice, and dark, and green, hell, we even got a bit of a shower as the overhead mister cut in), a tomato, fourteen Brussels sprouts, hand selected by yours truly even though I’m half blind most of the time, and I had to wait for some asshole to get out of the way, oh, yeah, and a box of Captain Heinlein’s Pan Sear Haddock Fillets, uh, the Traditional Recipe. (Not exactly as pictured, in other words.)

We're trying to eat more seafood, also; learn how to cook it properly.

More on that some other time—oh, yeah, we got a $1.00 bag of no-name salt-flavoured; hell, even potato-flavoured chips and a tub of French Onion dip.

Honestly, it’s like six or seven items, one bag of groceries for just under thirty dollars…

I reckon it’s worth it.

It's better than dying, after all.

One fucking dollar.

Something to look forward to, as we lay on our monastic cot, in our monastic cell, studying Byzantine mosaics and eating chips and dip sort of thing. Etc.

There were exactly twelve wings, or winglets as they are called by some wingnut who writes ad copy for the weekly grocery flyers…

I swear to God, that’s what it said.

‘Nuff said on that subject, but we were a bit distraught to discover one measly little packet of sauce in aforesaid box of chicken wings. (Note: after cooking and plating, there is indeed about half the sauce left over. What in the hell do we do with exactly one ounce of sauce is a very good question.)

Interestingly, or not, the sale price was $10.99. Just to repeat, twelve wings and one little packet of sauce for eleven bucks, on sale.

Argh.

The instructions clearly state these are not to be microwaved, but baked in an oven pre-heated to 400 F and cooked for thirty-five minutes or until an internal temperature of 165 C or something like that…I’d have to look that up in the Ontario Food Safety Guide.

Basically, we just shut the oven down after thirty-five minutes, and what with one thing and another, we let that sit for another ten minutes. The resulting wings were pretty much perfect insofar as that sort of thing goes...

That being said, the sauce is basically warmed up in hot water, and one wonders, considering I’m only one guy, (plus me. – ed.), what the hell we’re going to do when we go to cook the other six wings, that, is one very good question.

Ah, the salad is a winter salad, consisting of Romaine, tomato, onion, and red pepper. If we use any dressing at all, it will be Thousand Island because that is the one and only dressing in the fridge, and it’s lasted these last three years now, so why would we have more than one. This stuff don’t exactly last forever, after all. Sooner or later, I will rinse out that bottle and just throw out that bottle whether it’s empty or not—

Carrot sticks are self-explanatory enough…any asshole can do that, as I have proven before. 

The salad.

Also, a stick of celery--but we digress.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a story for another day. (He means the fish, I think. – ed.)

Which -- ed. is definitely looking forward to.

 

#fritz

 

Notes. This story has been updated to indicate that it has been updated. Ah, the food was very good, incidentally. Also, #beer you don't want to forget about that.

Okay, so our good friend and colleague, Louis Shalako, has all kinds of books and stories on Smashwords. Some of them are free.

Images. Zach Neal.

Thank you for reading, ladies and gentlemen. 

Reading the Grocery Flyers, Biting Back Tears. #fritz

#fritz uses black pepper, and paprika on the noodles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#fritz

 

 

We’re kind of reading the grocery flyers and biting back tears, in what is either a mixed metaphor or a malapropism, or maybe it was Leo Gorcey in some failed early cooking show, spun off from The Bowery Boys in an alternate universe comprehensible only to Moebius and guys like you.

Maybe Ricky said it, in the lost episode of Trailer Park Boys.

Either that, or maybe it's just the prices. One can only visualize the aroma of a half rack of ribs and a couple of shrimp, going down the hallway, under the doors and around the frames of some pretty unfortunate neighbours assuming some of them can't cook worth a shit at all although sometimes the smell is pretty good and one wonders about that guy--them shoes came out of the bargain rack at a local thrift shop if I ain't mistaken, and even then, just a little bit gay, ah, ladies and gentlemen.

That being said, we have been thinking a lot (or alot – ed.) about sea food, which as we all know is good for the brain, and it has a lot of unsaturated, that is to say, good fats. And it will put lead in your pencil and at this point in time, what with all of the supply chain disruptions, might even be cheaper than a box of Count Chocula. It also has vitamins and minerals and stuff like that. It's got trace elements, not too many free radicals, and all in all, it's very good at maintaining ones' (or one's. - ed.) precious bodily fluids.

Sorry, this is all about seafood and I digress.

...which is a gourmet meal in and of itself.

Hot, hearty and wholesome food is good for keeping up the morals. (Morale. - ed.) 

(Morals. If you have food, you don't need to steal copper wire and such-like. - Louis.)

(Ah. - ed.)

So. We got a box of Highliner Beer Battered Haddock fillets, these were on sale some time ago at Giant Tiger. The same day, we grabbed the box of battered scallops, on sale for $4.97 or something crazy like that, bearing in mind that the actual weight of product is marked on the box. 

Focusing on seafood, also beans. #beer

We haven’t tasted scallops in quite some time and so we had certain expectations. These appear to be small bits, cut up, rather than a whole breaded scallop.

Even so, it is good to simply taste something different, such things, every once in a while.

Now, the frozen, Marina Del Rey frozen Argentine wild shrimp came from Food Basics. This is why we read the flyers once in a while. So I bought that, and then when I got it home, I realized that we really don’t have any sauce for that sort of thing, also, I have never done shrimp before, also, I had brought in the tabletop gas grille from my balcony, due to inclement weather and etc.

(Frozen, etc. - ed.)

Today, I picked up exactly $21.00 worth of groceries, including the price of a plastic bag.

More or less as pictured.

This included a field cucumber, a tomato, and a tub of creamy noodle salad, which has gone very quickly from $1.79 all the way up to $2.99, even though the Province of Ontario has no plans to raise disability within the course of our natural, (or unnatural, in some cases, er, lifetimes. – ed.) ...and now I shall finish this sentence, thank you very much.

This is why I roasted a half a rack of ribs along with two of the frozen shrimp, in a pre-heated oven of 375 F, and flipping all of that two or three times over twenty-two minutes or so, or perhaps even a little bit longer, depending on how things were going at the time. Etc.

I served that with other things, (...things. - ed.) as the reader can see.

Considering three different kinds of seafood in the freezer, and a bag with a couple of servings of frozen French fries, my brain really ought to be adding cells at an alarming, if not quite impressive, rate. That is because, theoretically seafood is good for you.

END

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An Impromptu Stew. #fritz

An unusual presentation, but whatever works. #fritz

 

The fact is, (and has always been), that cooking for one has its difficulties, not the least of which are leftovers.

May I be frank with you? I’ll be earnest if you’d rather—

We had a few ounces of beefy stock left over after cooking a roast a few days ago. We still had cold beef in the fridge, and this after hot beef sandwiches, as well as one helluva good cold beef sandwich.

We still had a couple of mushrooms left over, from making a series of four pizzas, all of which came out pretty good. Things being as they are, that is to say things, means that while we used up the cheese and the pepperoni and the bacon, we still have (or had) mushrooms left over. We still had red pepper left over. We still had the vegetable cocktail, which we bought and dribbled over our aforesaid roast. You can see where I put a bit of that in our stock/gravy/juice.

Love that veggie cocktail.

Then there is the whole question of lunch. I had some idea that I was going to do this. I try to keep the makings for some kind of salad around here.

The prep time isn’t huge, there is some simmering time.

So, with most of a tin of beef gravy, left over, and our bit of beef stock, (left over from cooking), and our mushrooms, and a few leftover green peas, we sort of had the makings for what I like to call Impromptu Stew.

Before we even got to putting that on the burner, we had already peeled a very large (and free) potato. The free ones taste better, for some reason…

***

More fucking leftovers. Cook 'em up and get rid of them.

 

That has to be thoroughly boiled, otherwise they can be pretty hard to mash.

We made a salad of Romaine, green onion, red pepper, and tomato. We set out the bottle of Thousand Island dressing. We polish up our sexy black plate with a bit of paper towel, and voila.

It’s beginning to look like a darned good lunch. So, you want the potatoes to boil, the salad to stew in its own juices in the fridge while you’re cooking, and then to have the stew simmer and bubble a bit, not excessively, but basically, the mushrooms are the only thing in there that really hasn’t been cooked before.

There is no butter or margarine on the potatoes. Salt and pepper maybe.

That is either a thin gravy or a thick soup, ladies and gentlemen, and one hopes you all will excuse the rather unusual presentation.

Whatever works, works.

The meal was good, quite frankly my soup beats the hell out of those industrial soups…

And the funny thing is…we have leftovers. I guess that goes in the fridge alongside that half a pizza from a day or two ago.

You can never have enough leftovers, that is what I always like to say.

(Fuck.)

#fritz

 

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