Boil in Bag Omelets

I saw this recipe on ESPN during a pregame show for one of the 400 stupid college football games I have to watch every weekend because my roommates are all super fans. You know the type. Screaming at the TV and rooting for anywhere between 5 and 25 different colleges, 99% of which they did not attend and have no affiliation with.

The pregame show presented various different ways to make breakfast during a early morning tailgate party. The recipe itself was for boil in bag omelets. I was intrigued by an alternative method for making omelets, mainly because I am God awful at making them for some reason. They always end up becoming “scrambles”, which is breakfast talk for “failure”.

Luckily I had all the ingredients necessary to make a quality omelet. I combined two eggs, mushrooms, peppers, onions, and bacon in a medium sized Ziploc bag. Drop the bag in a large pot of boiling water. Leave the bag in the water a little longer than you think you should. I removed mine prematurely and soon realized that the innards of my omelet were not cooked. I threw it into a new bag and put it back in the water for a few minutes and ta-dah! A perfectly shaped omelet!

While the omelet was shaped like a burrito and looked delicious, it lacked that taste you get from frying it up in a pan. It also took longer to boil an omelet than it would to cook one the traditional way. It was also a little watery. If you’re not the best omelet maker though, it may be worth the little extra time to insure it makes it to your plate in one piece.

Chocolate Banana Breakfast Smoothie

How many times have you woken up starving for no particular reason? You don’t want to grab a muffin or some other doughy ball of fat and sugar because you’ll just be hungry again an hour later. You also don’t have time for a real breakfast full of proteins and other things of that nature. So you go to work hungry and run out the clock until you reach a time where it’s socially acceptable to eat your lunch.

Here’s a simple idea. Make a breakfast smoothie. They’re quick and easy to make, and if you stock up on whey protein ahead of time, you can make a protein packed breakfast that will keep you energized until lunch time.

Here’s an easy recipe:

- 2 Table Spoons Vanilla Yogurt
- 1 Cup Chocolate Milk
- 1 Banana
- 2 Table Spoons Chocolate Whey Protein (optional)
- 1 Cup Crushed Ice

Just mix all the ingredients in a blender and you’re good to go. If you have a travel container then you can take the shake with you and save some for later. Smoothies are great because if you stock up on a few key ingredients like yogurt, milk, and fruit, you can make pretty much any combo you like.

Make it happen.

Become a Food Fight Follower!

Hey everyone. You may or may not have noticed the section devoted to "followers" of this blog in the lower left hand column. I strongly urge you all to become a follower of my blog! Why? Because it makes it look like I have an audience!

Not only that, but it's cool for me to see who's checking my writings on a regular basis. You even get to inculde an image of yourself, so all your friends can see what great taste you have in blogs! You can become a follower by clicking the followers section itself or if thats too much work you can do it here.

If you won't do it for me... do it for this baby seal.

BBQ Chicken Pizza Recipe

I could lie and blame my current financial situation on our failing economy, but the fact of the matter is I was broke long before the current recession. I’m terrible with money and I usually spend it before I make it. I also tend to live far outside my means in terms of expensive dinners, booze, and electronics are concerned.

With the new year less than a month away, I‘ve decided to make some strides to get myself out of debt and learn to better manage my money.That means less dining out and more dining in. For the past couple of weeks I have been cooking at home a lot more than I have in the past. Not only that, but I’ve been cooking on a budget. Lots of inexpensive seafood, chili’s, soups, & homemade pizzas.

Here’s a cheap and easy recipe for BBQ Chicken Pizza:

Here’s what you’ll need:

-1 (12 inch) pre-baked pizza crust
-1/2 cup barbecue sauce
-1/2 cup diced grilled chicken
-1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
-1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
-1/4 cup chopped red onion
-1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
-1 pizza pan

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place the pizza crust on a pizza pan or cookie sheet. Spread with BBQ sauce and chicken. Sprinkle evenly with red pepper, green pepper and onion and cover with cheese. Bake the pizza for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

Please Don't Try This at Home

Before I begin, if you enjoy my ramblings on this blog than you may also like my new blog: Strongly Worded, where I write angry letters to things that I feel have wronged me in some form or another. Please check it out!

On to business! As most of you know, I have dedicated several posts on this blog to bacon related studies and the bacon arts. Bacon cinnamon buns, bacon cookies, chocolate covered bacon, and so on. I honestly never thought the day would come when I see someone do something bacon to the point where I thought myself, “I don't think this is safe”.

I discovered the following images at Holytaco.com. I'm going to warn you, this isn't for the faint of heart.

Who doesn't like a little arts and crafts when they cook? Weaving bacon together looks like about as fun as it does delicious. Next fry the bacon up in a frying pan, but make sure you don't pause to think about what you are doing or may me not be able to continue.

As if a that bacon tapestry didn't look bad enough for you.

Whoever thought of this concept is either a certified genius or an authentic nut job.

Is it a burrito? A pork roll? Or just an abomination of nature? For the love of God, please don't try this at home.

Calamari Pasta Recipe

Today I’d like to share a recipe I made last night with nothing but leftovers from my fridge. Sounds kind of boring doesn’t it? Well, the main ingredient was somewhat unique, if that makes you feel any better. In my opinion this ingredient is perfect to throw over pasta, which is exactly what I did. What was it? Was it chicken? Nope. Think smaller. Think… more legs.

That’s right, calamari! I have had an irrational love of calamari (Italian for squid) since I was a kid. My grandmother used to fry it up for the family on News Year Day. It’s great stuff and it’s remarkably cheap and easy to prepare.

The night before last I had made seafood stew with shrimp, scallops, and calamari. I had over shot the amount of calamari that I needed, and thus was left with about a ½ a pound of tentacles left over. The tentacles happen to be my favorite part. This is lucky for me, because at the fish market most people request the rings.

At any rate, here’s my recipe for calamari in a white wine sauce and angel hair pasta. Please forgive the crudeness of this recipe, but I basically just throw things in the pan as I see fit. I don’t really care for exact measurements.

Here’s what you’ll need:

- Roughly ½ lb of squid (tentacles, rings, or both)
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- 3 tablespoons minced garlic
- 3 green onions (chopped)
- A handful of left over kidney beans (red and white)
- A generous splash of white cooking wine
- A generous amount of angel hair pasta
- A frying pan to cook it all in

Boil two pots of water, one for the pasta and one for the squid. Throw the squid into the boiling water only for a few moments (until it curls up and turns purple). Then strain it and set it aside. If you add the uncooked squid to the wine sauce raw, it turns it a weird shade of purple. Cook the angel hair pasta in the other pot, drain, and set aside.

In a separate frying pan add the rest of the ingredients and simmer on low until hot. Next turn up the heat a little and add the cooked squid and stir for a few minutes.

Pour the squid and wine sauce over the pasta and you’re done! Not only is it easy and delicious, but it also freaks out your roommates when they see you eating it. No one in my house was willing to try it except for the dog and he seemed to enjoy it.

Moms Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Today I would like to share with you one of my mom’s greatest recipes: her famous pumpkin pie. This is easily one of my top 3 favorite desserts that she makes. Every holiday season she rolls out a number of different pies, I am also an avid apple pie fan, but pumpkin is the winner in my book by a significant margin.

Here’s what you'll need:

-3/4 cup granulated sugar
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
-1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
-2 large eggs
-1 can (15 oz.) canned pumpkin
-1 can (12 fl. oz.) evaporated milk
-1 unbaked 9-inch (4-cup volume) deep-dish pie shell

-1 pie pan
-Whipped cream

-Vanilla Ice Cream

Mix sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in small bowl. Beat eggs in large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Next pour the mixture into the pie shell. Bake in a preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F and then bake for another 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean.

Let the pie cool for 2 hours and then refrigerate. Top with whipped cream before and vanilla ice cream.

Chili Con Crazy!

If you frequent my blog then you may have noticed that I am on quite a chili kick as of late. Since I created my now famous ‘Nightmare Chorizo Chili’, I have been mixing and matching various ingredients and experimenting with different textures and flavors. Last night I attempted to make a chili with an ingredient that you don’t normally associate with chili: Shrimp.

I was a little scared at first. I was cooking for someone who doesn’t eat meat so my options were a strictly vegetarian chili or some sort of seafood chili. I had to abandon my go to ingredient, which is Chorizo sausage, for either fake ground beef or some type of seafood. Shrimp seemed like the only logical choice. Though next, I’d like to try crawfish.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. It’s insanely easy and pretty healthy by chili standards. All you need is a large sauce pan or crockpot and the following ingredients.

-¾ pound of shrimp tails removed (I used precooked to save time)
-1 can (16 ounces) diced tomatoes with jalapenos
-1 can (16 ounces) red kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
-1 cup tomato sauce
-4 green onions (chopped)
-3 cloves garlic (diced)
-1 ½ tablespoon chili powder
-¾ teaspoon ground cumin
-½ teaspoon garlic powder
-½ teaspoon salt
-¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
-¼ teaspoon dried oregano
-½ can light beer
-1 shot whiskey

Once you’ve prepared the ingredients just throw it all in a large crockpot and cook on medium heat until the chili begins to boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer until the shrimp curl up. Top with shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and crush tortilla chips.

Last Minute X-Mas Gift Ideas

Since Christmas is fast approaching, I thought it might be a good idea to throw out some last minute gift ideas for the food enthusiast in your life. I stumbled upon this product on Flickr when I noticed an oddly named group known as “Mr. Bento Porn”. Bento boxes are great ways to transport your lunch to work or whatever. Especially if you’re fancy and your lunch consists of several different parts that you don’t want all mashed together. Technically, you could bring your breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the one container.

The people in the Mr. Bento Porn group however, have taken it to the extreme. They all send in photographs of their Bento’s creatively displaying their meals in such a way that can only be described as weirdly artistic. They’ve somehow managed to make packing your lunch into an art form. Don't ask me how. I personally would love to get one of these things for X-mas. Though I’d probably go nuts making complicated meals for about a week before I just started bringing my plain old sandwich and leaving the other compartments empty.

If you’re thinking of getting a Bento for someone this X-mas, you can get one at Cookware.com. Tell em’ Jon sent you.

The Great Burger Quest: Week 8

It’s about that time again. It’s time for week 8 of my Boston Burger Quest. I took last week off because of Thanksgiving, but I’m back and ready for another burger. With only 3 weeks left, where did I decide to go this week? I dined at Charley’s Eating and Drinking Saloon.

I’ve been to Charley’s a handful of times, but I don’t believe I’ve ever had their burger. If I have, than I don’t remember it… which could very well be the case. Either way, I was joined by my friend Stupid Scott and his lovely girlfriend Rachel. After she took 30 minutes deciding what salad to order, Scott and I dug into our burgers.

I wasn’t impressed. The burger was remarkably average. The bun was a little too soft, the burger was slightly undercooked, and aside from the onion rings inside, it was fairly flavorless. After thinking about it for a good 6 seconds, I just finished eating it without taking anything else into account. I was very quickly bored with the whole thing. The fries were definitely better than most of the fries I’ve encountered over the past 7 weeks. It just would have been nice if they had given me more than six.

On the Jon Defreest Scale of Overwhelming Deliciosity I give the Charley’s burger a wonderfully mild 5 out of 10.

Don’t waste your money. Charley’s is a fine establishment, but the burger is boring and uninspired. I’d go there for a steak or a nice piece of fish, but no more burgers from Charley’s for me.

If you liked this burger review, then you may also like The Great Burger Quest Week 7, Week 6, and Week 5.

Holiday Gifts

Looking for a gift for that warm beverage lover in your family? Do you not care enough about this person to spend more than 30 bucks on a X-Mas gift? Well, have I found the perfect gift for you!

This nifty little mug would be the perfect edition to anyone’s silly mug collection. Once this mug is filled with a beverage of your choosing, it displays a helpful message to inform the user of the approximate temperature of its contents. It has 3 messages: Hot, Cold, and Hot and Cold at the same time. I guess it was too hard to have the mug say “warm”.

When the contents of the mug are hot, the mug turns white and displays the word “hot”. When you beverage is cold, it turns black and displays the word “Cold”. Did everyone get, that's gonna get it? Good, we'll move.

The days of burning your tongue on a scalding mug of hot cocoa are a thing of the past! Simply look at the side of your mug and it will tell you everything that you need to know. How many times have you reached for you cup of morning coffee only to be shocked at how cold it has become. Never again! If you’re seriously interested this mug you can purchase it here.

If you want to purchase me this mug for X-mas simply email me and I’ll send you my address. I also except cash gifts and moderately to unreasonably high priced bottles of Scotch.

If you enjoyed this product then you may also enjoy this condiment gun or these pen cap utensils.

A Recipe... for Terror!

I’m a bit tried this morning. I had a tough time sleeping last night and I had some pretty graphic nightmares. I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say it involved homicide and a sledgehammer. I have a wild imagination. I rarely dream and even more rarely do I have bad dreams or nightmares. After some thought, I think I can I know why my dreams were so dark: my famous chorizo chili.

Yesterday, I made chorizo chili. I’ll spare you the recipe for now, but it contains hot chorizo sausage, jalapenos, garlic, beer, whiskey, and garlic. Those are all the right ingredients for a good night sleep, right? Well… apparently not. I made chili for me and my 3 roommates and we all had weird dreams. Not everyone had nightmares, but all 4 of us had some form of a weird dreaming experience. I've spent the morning trolling Google looking for a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, with such luck. I’m going to have to assume that the dreams are a byproduct of the combination of booze and hot peppers.

What foods give you crazy dreams?

Moms Trifle Recipe

Yesterday I briefly touched upon my Thanksgiving dinner. What I failed to discuss in detail was the dessert. I thought it would be fun to talk about one of my mom’s greatest recipes: Trifle. Trifle is a dessert my family enjoys roughly twice a year; once at Thanksgiving and then usually again on Christmas Eve. It’s relatively easy to make and is quite impressive looking. It’s a great crowd pleaser and one of my favorites.

All you need is a cake pan and a trifle bowl to serve it in. The trifle bowl is vital, because if you can’t see the layers, then it’s just a giant bowl of pudding.

-1 package yellow cake mix
-1 package instant chocolate pudding mix
-1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
-1 cup milk
-1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
-1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
-3 bananas, sliced
-1 handful of strawberries, sliced
-3 Heath Bars, crushed

Prepare cake according to package directions and bake in a 9x13 inch pan. Let the cake cool completely. Cut half the cake into smaller pieces.

In 2 large bowls, create the two different pudding layers a keep them separate. In a large trifle bowl, layer 1/3 of the cake cubes, 1/3 of the chocolate pudding, 1/3 of the banana slices and 1/3 of the strawberries.

Repeat the process except this time use the vanilla pudding and top with more whipped cream and crushed Heath Bar pieces.

If you enjoyed this recipe then you may also enjoy Hawaiian Burgers and Beer Butt Chicken.

Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner

Another Thanksgiving is in the books, as people all across America prepare for one of the longest work weeks of the year. As promised, I have documented my Thanksgiving day feast, so that I may share with all of you. Not only that, but all of my Thanksgiving predictions also came true. This year was pretty much the same as every other year and every bit as delicious.

I rolled in to my grandma’s house somewhere around 3 o’clock and just in time to see the bird come out of the oven. Once I took off my coat, I promptly made myself a drink and took a seat on the couch alongside my father.

My dad, attempting to read the paper and watch TV at the same time.

Next to me on an end table was a tray of crackers and some undisclosed pink dip that I was later informed was “Shrimp dip”. It tasted like cheese, shrimp, and cocktail sauce and had quite a wonderfully addictive quality. My aunt later scolded me for my failed attempt to identify said dip and declared, “We have this dip every year!” After a series of one on one interviews, I later confirmed with every member of my family that we had never seen this dip before in our lives.

As I drifted in and out of consciousness on my grandma’s couch, we flipped the channels between House and whatever football game was on at the time until it was time to eat. Below is a photo of my plate.

It's called sexy people, get used to it.

The dinner consisted entirely of Thanksgiving Day staples, save for a new dish that my grandmother had concocted. It was a simple dish comprised of broccoli, pearl onions, and bacon and it was quite a hit. I for one, helped myself to seconds and possibly even thirds.

Next was dessert. I was stuffed to the rafters, so I only had a single piece of pumpkin pie. Our dessert table offered pumpkin pie, apple pie, lemon meringue pie, trifle, and a new mystery dessert that my mom created which contained more rum than the average pirate.

All in all it was another great Thanksgiving that is finally out of the way, so we can get to the king of all holidays! But that rant is for another day.

If you liked this family post then you may also enjoy Corso Family Wine Making Day Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.