ODG Eats

The meatloaf and onion ring dinner the other night was delightful, but, as we all well know, the best part about meatloaf is the meatloaf sandwiches that come later, and these were a fuckin doozy. I generally don't write shorter posts like this, but these sandwiches were so tasty that they deserve it. I started off by slicing a couple of rolls in half and pouring/spreading some extra virgin olive oil on each piece, then sprinkling a little salt and cracking a little pepper into the oil. On the top pieces, I laid out some basil leaves, and the bottoms got some sliced grape tomatoes and mushroom. Next up, I put the meatloaf slices on the bottoms and some sliced Romano cheese on the tops. You can't go wrong putting cheese on a meatloaf sandwich (unless you're lactose intolerant, in which case you might shit yourself, although Romano will have lower or, sometimes, no lactose, so if you want to play Fecal Roulette, go for it). The next step is just to set your oven to a high tem...

Y'know, I've been eating way too healthy lately, and this is probably a good thing, but sometimes you just want to clog your arteries because fuck it. That's pretty much the entire line of reasoning behind why I cooked what I cooked tonight, two things I've never actually cooked before: meatloaf and onion rings. Now to be fair, my ingredients looks like they're gonna be pretty fucking healthy, maybe making some pasta sauce or something, right? Yeah, fuck that noise. I started off by halving the tomatoes, slicing the mushrooms, smashing and mincing the garlic, rolling and mincing the basil, cutting one red onion into rings (i.e. against the grain), and grating about a quarter of another red onion.  This is what I mean by cutting the onion into rings. You don't cut from top to bottom, but across the side. I cut the onion into quarters and pulled the rings apart. I dumped all of the meatloaf ingredients into a bowl. In addition to the beef, garlic, and grated onion...

So after my last sushi experiment, I'd been thinking about some other things to try without going too crazy. I still had a decent bit of tuna and octopus left over and a free Sunday afternoon, so I decided it was time for my second excursion into mercilessly butchering the graceful art of sushi-making.  I wanted to do more than just fish, rice, and seaweed this time, so I started off by julienning a little bit of purple sweet potato and boiling those pieces in lightly salted water for a few minutes. Since the pieces were so small, it didn't take long for them to cook. I drained the water and set the potato slices away. On to step 2: I wanted to toast up some panko bread crumbs to give a little texture to my rolls. I just poured a bunch of crumbs into my pan with no other shit, kept it at a medium-low heat, and, get this: I actually was able to flip it without a utensil. Just that little dip-push-pull thing that fancy tv chefs do to flip shit over. I actually pulled it off witho...

I've debated whether I should write this one, but I did say I was sharing failures, and this failure was fucking spectacular. I picked up a pack of frozen whole sardines last weekend, and I thought I could do something cool with them.  So I thawed them out and had no idea what to do after that.  So I figured I'd prep my veggies. I sliced up some shiitakes and diced some red bell pepper (red bowl), minced some red onion and garlic (top-right bowl), and quartered and salted some grape tomatoes. Okay, back to the fish. I figured I should remove the heads and tails, but I didn't want to just toss them out, so I thought I'd make some broth for...something. I didn't have a fucking plan, if you couldn't tell. I threw those bits into a pot with water, added some salt, a couple bay leaves, and got it started simmering. So now what? I was thinking maybe I'd cook them like this, but then I noticed that lovely goop falling out the head end of the nearest fish and realiz...

So last weekend, I learned that I can get about two pounds of pork kidneys (6 kidneys in total) for $4 at the international market halfway across town. When I saw that, I thought to myself, "Self, we've never eaten kidneys before. They don't cost much. Let's have an adventure!" and I tossed a pack into my buggy. Granted, I had no idea what the fuck to do with them, but that's all part of the fun. I mean, I ate plenty of pig poop chute a couple months ago, so why not eat some piss sieves, too? Having learned from my mistakes with the chitlins, I did Google how to clean kidneys before I started, and I even did my best to follow instructions before I got bored, closed the site, forgot some steps, skipped others, and just said, "fuck it." First things first, I peeled off the pieces of membrane still attached. That was easy. I also trimmed off any extra chunks of...whatever-the-fuck that were attached to them. Next step was cutting the kidney in half to ...