If you’ve been to some sort of party that hasn’t had cheesy potatoes as a food option then I’m not sure what’s going on with the people you know.  Every graduation party, wedding, or other social event should have cheesy potatoes.  If you aren’t a good enough host to have cheesy potatoes, then I’m not going to be a good enough guest to stay.  It’s just… not cool.

What a lot of people don’t realize is how easy they are to make.  Seriously, 8 bucks and 45 minutes later you have yourself an enormous pile of cheese and potatoes.  Who doesn’t like that combination?

Ingredients

• 2 lb. bag of hash browns – Get the diced variety.  The ones that are cut into squares.
• 1 bag shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• Butter
• 1/4 of a large, yellow onion, diced.
• Salt, pepper

Directions

• Mix everything together, throw any remaining cheese on top, and bake for 45 mins.  Really difficult.

Just for the record, I’m not really down with putting Cornflakes on top.  If you want a little texture, throw some breadcrumbs on it.  Don’t be crushing up breakfast cereal and putting it on food.  That’s just weird.

Don’t you wish you still felt this way about spaghetti?  Is that cowboy-cheeseman about to rope and brand this boy like a steer?  What type of hallucinogenics are in this boy’s dinner milk?

A lot of people wonder why I like food so much but still continue to frequent fast food restaurants.  People even question my taste in food because of it.  The truth is, fast food tastes good.  It’s designed and processed that way.  If you don’t like fast food, is probably because you’re smart enough to realize that the reason it tastes good is the same reason it’s terrible for you.  Then again, I know that good and well but still need to get my fix every once in a while.  There’s just a few things that I could never go without.  On that list is KFC’s Famous Bowl.

The Famous Bowl isn’t new or relevant to anything, I just love Famous Bowls.  I know, to some people, it’s the most disgusting fast food combination ever created, but to me it’s perfection.  I’m one of those people that combines their entire Thanksgiving dinner into one pile until it resembles something that they would serve in prison.  The mixture of mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, gravy,and corn makes my Thanksgiving every year.  Apparently someone at KFC used this same mixture method and decided to apply it to their menu.  Good man.

It was a basic concept to combine mashed potatoes, gravy, and chicken.  Who hasn’t mixed their chicken with their mashed potatoes before?  They took this a step further adding corn and just got absolutely ridiculous by topping the entire thing with cheese.  Whose idea was it to top this heart attack bowl with cheese?  Whoever you are, you don’t owe anyone an explanation.  You deserve a medal.

The Famous Bowl tops out with 740 calories, 31 grams of fat and 9 grams of saturated fat, 2110 mg sodium.  If you’re on a 2,000 calorie diet the bowl provides you with a third of your calories, 47% of your fat and 45% of your saturated fats, and 87% of your sodium.  That’s not irresponsible, that’s a bargain.

So to the people who think it’s ridiculous that I like Famous Bowls while giving my opinion on more “respectable” cuisine, I completely agree with you.  There’s just something about this mess of slop that I have to have.

On a completely random note, skip to the .52 second mark on this video for more on prison slop.  Or just watch the whole thing for comedic greatness.

I’m not much of a burger guy.  Wait, yes I am.  It’s just hard to find a good burger these days.  Restaurant burgers are always bland, and fast food burgers just aren’t burgers.  The only legit ones these days come from hole in the wall joints who boast a grill that’s been seasoned for years.  I’ve never gotten homemade burgers to taste the way I want, mainly because I haven’t tried very hard.  My homemade burger experience mainly consists of buying a package of ground chuck from the grocery store, seasoning the shit out of it, and throwing it in a pan.  The results haven’t been too great.

This past week I set out to change my homemade burger woes.  I was going to do everything in my power to make the closest thing to a perfect burger I could without a seasoned grill.  This wasn’t going to be an easy task.  The logical first step was to figure out the meats I would use.  I knew that chuck was the best type of beef to use, due to it’s fat content, but while it will make a juicy burger it definitely lacks in flavor.  I decided that adding sirloin was the only option.  The chuck would bring the fat to the party, and the sirloin would show up fashionably late and bring the flavor.  Together, they would make one incredible burger.

Meet sirloin and chuck. They are here to party.

Bringing chuck and sirloin to the party wasn’t the only thing I had to do.  Oh no.  These were perfect burgers I was making.  As you can see from the picture above, I purchased a cut of each and decided that I was going to grind my own meat.  I didn’t want some store bought beef bag that could possibly come from 100 different cows.  This way, I know where my meat is coming from.  Well, kind of.

I don’t own a meat grinder, but I do own the next best thing which is a food processor.  I had heard for some time that a food processor will give you a different consistency than a grinder but generally it works just as well.  I decided this was good enough for me since I don’t have $150 to drop on a meat grinder.

With a food processor all all you need to do is some really simple preparation, then let it do the work.  I started by trimming some of the fat off of the cuts.  Fat not only means flavor, but a juicy burger as well, so I left a good amount on.  I then cut the meat into cubes and left them in the freezer for an hour or so.  Unless you want ground beef that resembles what your cat eats, this is an important step.  After the freezing process, 6 or 7 cubes went into the food processor per “grind”, and pulsed 15-20 times.  Do I have to explain why you don’t want to puree your beef?  I don’t believe so.

After you pulse/chop up all of the beef cubes, you should have a bowl of goodness that looks something like the following picture.  Beautiful.  I added a little salt, pepper, minced garlic, and seasoning salt, but I figured the beef would do most of the talking.

At this point, it wasn’t enough that I had freshly ground beef.  For some reason I went a little nuts.  This is a reoccurring issue with me.  I decided the only way to prepare these burgers was to stuff them with random things I had in my refrigerator and freezer.  I hadn’t gone shopping in some time, so this ended up being one of those “Hey, I wonder what this will taste like” kind of moments.

The first burger was pretty simple and only stuffed with a bit of Gorgonzola cheese.

The next burger was a little crazier, but still nothing big.  I decided that a Cheddar cheese and bacon burger was a requirement.

This is when things started to get a little crazy.  In my kitchen, there are always have plenty of pierogies.  I can’t get enough of them.  For some reason, I thought pierogies would be a perfect thing to put inside a burger.  Observe, a pierogi burger.

If a pierogie burger wasn’t weird enough already, I remembered that I had a bag of pizza rolls in the freezer.  Yes, the pizza roll burger was born.

After I completely ruined my idea to make burgers out of flavorful beef by stuffing them with the most random products I could get my hands on, I had to somehow make these monsters into actual burgers.  It took a long time, but I finally got the patties to actually resemble a burger.  They may look like brontosaurus burgers, but these babies are legit.

From there the burgers went onto a HOT cast iron skillet for about 3 minutes on each side and then into the oven on 350 for about 5-7 minutes.  I had never made burgers of this kind before, so I figured some time in the oven would do them well.

After the time on the skillet, these things were starting to look beautiful.  The Cheddar and bacon burger was starting to come apart a little bit, but no big deal.  Nothing was oozing out of the sides.  I couldn’t exactly get the grill marks I was looking for, but things were looking good.

Now that the burgers were cooked, the logical next step was to cut them in half so there would be room in our stomachs to sample all four burgers.  It’s not every night that I attempt to eat as much as humanly possible.  Sometimes I like to enjoy the flavor!  Everything looked good, except the fillings got a little smushed down by the massive amount of meat used for each burger.  There was only a thin layer of stuffing with the rest just being beef.  Next time I’ll have to go a little heavier on the stuffings and a little lighter on the beef.  Rookie mistake.  Not exactly bush league though.  These things were deeeeelicious.

The Gorgonzola Burger is pretty overpowering.  If you’re not a serious Gorgonzola fan, I would stay away from putting it in your burger.  I thought it was very good, but others who tried it found it to be rather disgusting.

The Cheddar Bacon Burger was delicious, but I’ll probably leave the bacon out of the inside of the burger next time.  It lost its crispiness in the cooking process, but still gave the burger great flavor.  The Cheddar didn’t ooze out the way I would have liked it, probably because I didn’t use enough.

The Pierogi Burger was the shocker of them all.  It was incredible.  The potato flavor went right with the burger and the perogi filling actually oozed out of the burger as you pushed down on it.  I’m for sure making another perogi burger.

I had high hopes for the Pizza Roll Burger and it fell flat.  I only put three inside of the burger and they were completely smushed down by the beef.  The only taste of a pizza roll I got was a little bit in the aftertaste.

Give a little effort on the preperation and you can have yourself a plate of delicious leftovers stuffed brontosaurus burgers at home.

In my continued effort to highlight quality Mexican restaurants that haven’t won some dumb local award and aren’t named Tios in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor area, I bring to you La Fuente.  This area is home to some excellent Mexican restaurants, but La Fuente will always be tops in my book.  This gem used to be down the street from my old apartment and provided my dinners 2-3 times per week.  Now, unfortunately, I only visit a few times per month.

Everything about about this place is perfect.  From the decor, to the service, to the food.   This place is amazing.  Seriously.  I love this place.  I want to write a detailed review, but it’s hard because I would probably use the word amazing about 500 times.  I will do my best, but I can’t guarantee that you will get anything out of this besides the fact that I absolutely adore La Fuente.

When you sit down, I guarantee you have chips and salsa in front of you within 10 seconds.  Like all great Mexican joints, there is a designated chips and salsa guy whose only job is to get you your chips and salsa in a timely manner.  It’s been the same guy for the five years I’ve been coming in.  I’m pretty sure all the guy does is hang out until he sees someone walk in, sprints to the kitchen, and sprints back with a pitcher of salsa and a basket of warm tortilla chips that taste like fresh corn taco shells that have been cut into the shape of tortilla chips.  They’re extremely crunchy and extremely good.  The salsa is a perfect blend between smooth and chunky, with chunks of onion and cilantro.  I can honestly say that La Fuente has the chips and salsa, served by the best damn chips and salsa guy in the area.

I could probably sit and fill myself up on chips and salsa while drinking water, but what fun is water?  La Fuente proudly serves 42 oz. margaritas.  You can get smaller sizes, but why would you?

La Fuente’s menu contains about 100 items, no exaggerating.  From combos, to tamales, burritos, and Mexican specialties.  It’s all there.  I’m the type of person who likes to branch out and try different things, but here I tend to stick with the Chori Pollo.  Because.. Well.. It’s one of my favorite Mexican dishes of all time.  Marinated chicken breast topped with chorizo, a slice of pineapple, and cheese..  Served with rice and beans and two freshly made tortillas.  Ohhh man.

I’m honestly emotional just writing this review.  Sorry I didn’t have much for you besides “This place is amazing”, and “Ohhhh Man”.  It’s just that good.  I urge you to drive many miles to try this place out.

La Fuente
1930 Whittaker Road
Ypsilanti, MI 48197-9432

Having recently posted a few times about sandwiches, I’ve been feeling a bit reflective.  What makes a good sandwich?  Or rather, what makes the BEST sandwich?

The greatest sandwich that has ever crossed my lips is undoubtedly the roast beef sandwich from Quartermaster’s Deli in New Orleans, LA.  Hands down.  No questions.  Why no good photos?  Blame it on a broken camera.  Or…blame it on greater forces.  Forces in the universe that would prevent the revelation of such beauty to internet masses that cannot savor or smell it.  Or maybe Todd just dropped his camera the night before….

Seems fitting, though.  This sandwich (and the deli that makes it) is purely amazing.  Great people and customer service.  Wonderful bread, fantastic quality meat and side dishes – the mac and cheese is outstanding, and something else.  But mainly…it is just something I can’t quite figure out.  After three trips to this place…I may never fully understand the magic.  Maybe that’s what makes a good sandwich a good sandwich.  The mystery of it…

Seriously…best sandwich ever.  Like eating a pile of love.  Roasted love. With beef on it.

Quartermaster Deli
1100 Bourbon Street [several blocks from most of Bourbon Street's debaucherous melee]
New Orleans, LA 70116

After seeing John’s suicide sandwich I found out I have a competitive side which I never knew I had. Gears started turning in my head to come up with the most cholesterol laden, fatty sandwich I could come up with.  I’ve always wanted to make the grilled cheese sandwich burger before and that’s pretty heavy, so I figured that was the perfect place to start. Bacon just feels natural to me, so of course that was going to be worked in. And more cheese, I love cheese. Normally I wouldn’t advocate the use of the plastic cheese, but it flows with the overall scheme. Still, something was missing. Then I remembered when I made the sausage stuffed french toast and someone suggested sausage gravy, I had never made sausage gravy before so I thought it’d be fun to give it a try. Super easy! Concerns me actually, if I can whip up sausage gravy in a few minutes now, what’s going to stop me from putting on everything. I digress. I’ll let the pictures do the talking from here…

Sometimes, there is planning involved

Butter adds flavor to sausage

First time making sausage gravy, I made it extra thick so it wouldn't slide out the burger.

7 slices of bacon. I needed the grease.

Beef.

Sooooo originally I was going to just put the grilled cheese in the toaster but then I was like, I should fry it. It was frying in butter until I looked to the side and I was like, DUH, fry it in the bacon fat with the burgers!

Two grilled cheese sandwiches

Step 1. Sausage gravy on the grilled cheese

Step 2. Bacon.

Step 3. Beef.

Step 4. Cheese.

Step 5. Build/Repeat

Look at that tower.

NOM

I used a fork for the rest