Dinosaur Parmigiano: Why I'm Way More Awesome than Sandra Lee

Have you guys heard of Sandra Lee and her "semi-homemade cooking" phenomenon? I hadn't until just recently, when I read something about her using baby food and muffin mix and trying to pass it off as homemade (well, semi-homemade) and I was slightly disgusted. It's not that I have a problem with taking shortcuts. I can totally understand using a muffin mix. I've done it myself. The problem that I have rests in her tendency to act like her creations take skill and to tell her audience that nobody will know that it's only semi-homemade. Oh, right--and the fact that this somehow has a show on the food network. If you want to be outraged, go to her page on the food network's site and watch the short videos on the bottom. There were one or two that I found acceptable, and the rest were just absurd. Nobody's going to think that a grocery-store cake with melted lemonade concentrate brushed on it, coated with canned frosting with lemon extract mixed in, is anywhere near homemade, yet she finishes every single "recipe" saying "And no one will know that it's semi-homemade!"

Sandra Lee, the gig is up. I'm about to beat you at your own game. LET'S GO.

RECIPE: Dinosaur Parmigiano

I made this up, like, six years ago. Because I love dinosaurs.

Ingredients:

-1 package Perdue dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets

-1 box spaghetti

-1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

-1 jar pasta sauce

-1/4 lb of the cheapest mozzarella you can buy

-about a teaspoon of Italian seasoning

-about a teaspoon of garlic powder

-freshly grated parmesan or romano cheese

-a couple fresh basil leaves (garnish, optional)

Yeah. This stuff. A good-quality sauce is key to making people think you have mad kitchen skills.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to the temperature that the package of chicken nuggets says.

2. Get a pot of water boiling.

3. Put the sauce in a pan on medium heat.

4. Shred the cheese.

5. Spread the chicken nuggets out on a cookie sheet. Use your fingers to sprinkle a tiny bit of Italian seasoning and garlic powder over each one. Press down on them (to sort of embed the seasoning into the breading). Flip over and repeat.

6. At this point, the sauce should be bubbling. Spoon a little bit of sauce over each dinosaur, then top with some shredded mozzarella. Stick in the oven for 8 minutes.

7. Your water should be boiling, too. Put the pasta in there and cook it until al dente, also about 8 minutes. When it's done, strain it, put it back in the pan (off the heat) and add the olive oil to keep it from sticking.

8. When the dinosaurs are done, take them out of the oven. You can now assemble your plates. Scoop a pile of the spaghetti onto each plate. Cover with sauce. Add 4-6 dinosaurs. Sprinkle with the freshly grated parmesan/romano and garnish with a basil leaf. POOF! Semi-homemade.

See the seasoning on there? That little added flavor will completely convince your guests that you made this all from scratch. Seriously. They'll have NO IDEA. (At least, that's what Sandra Lee would have you believe.)

You shredded that cheese yourself. What more can your guests possibly ask of you?

And with a gorgeous presentation like this, how could anyone suspect that you pretty much bought everything pre-made at the store?

Okay, that's enough sarcasm for now--I'm starting to feel nauseous just pretending to think like her. Now it's time for the important thing: why I'm better than her. I'll make a list for that, too.

Reasons I'm Better Than Sandra Lee:

1. I'm not actually going to pretend any of this is homemade. In fact, by using the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets instead of the less-obvious tenders or something, I'm admitting right up front that I put zero effort in. In short, I'm not going to lie to you.

2. I understand that, while sometimes you don't have time to cook an intricate meal for your family, shortcuts like this are neither as healthy or as tasty as what you'd make yourself if you had the time. I therefore don't encourage cooking like this all the time.

3. I would never, ever, EVER feed this (or anything like it) to guests. I mean, maybe if the "guest" were a little kid, sure--but I'm not going to have company over and serve them things I bought pre-made at the store.

4. I actually know how to make every aspect of this meal from scratch--the pasta, the sauce, the breaded chicken...okay, maybe not the cheese. But the rest, yes.

5. I think it bears mentioning twice--I'm not lying to you.

6. Come on. I used friggin' dinosaurs. How much more awesome could it get?

I promise to someday give you guys a real chicken parmesan recipe that isn't making fun of anyone. Someday. But for now...

Yes, we did actually eat this. And honestly? It's actually pretty tasty, as long as you don't expect real homemade flavor. I have no problem with boxed or jarred food items. It's easy and quick. This took about 45 minutes from me leaving to go to the grocery store and get the ingredients to putting dinner on the table, and you just can't do that with real homemade food, and most people don't have a lot of time to cook an intricate meal every day. There are plenty of better options out there for quick meals, but occasionally, this is just fine. The only real problem that I have is with people pretending it's something that it's not.

Oh--and I promise that, someday, I'll give you a real chicken parmesan recipe. It won't involve dinosaurs. But until then, why don't you go read about some awesome new discoveries that paleontologists are making? (I really, really love dinosaurs.)

Sandra Lee, our game is done sir.

Thank you for a lot of fun sir.

blechhh

On Friday I cooked fish for the first time ever.

I guess I should explain about me and fish. I hate fish. I love sushi. I hate the types of sushi that involve cooked shrimp or anything similar. I love shrimp. Except when I say that I love shrimp, really what I mean is I rarely eat shrimp and whenever I go to a party that has shrimp as an option part of me is saying "Hey, remember last time you ate shrimp? And the time before that? And pretty much every time ever? It's delicious, huh? You should definitely get in on that shrimp cocktail before it's gone and you KNOW it will be" and another part of me is saying "Shrimp is fish. You hate fish. Why would you eat shrimp? You won't like it. Sure, you seem to remember liking it before, but your memories are wrong. It's gross. Don't touch it." I always end up eating the shrimp and being happy that I did, and I tried scallops last summer and they weren't so bad, but in general, cooked seafood disgusts me. Occasionally it's prepared well and I enjoy it while it's in my mouth but then it leaves a nasty aftertaste and I get mad at myself for being tricked into eating fish again. I'm simplifying this by making a list, because I'm aware that nothing I just wrote made any sense to anyone but me.

TIMES THAT I LIKE FISH
-Shrimp, especially in shrimp cocktail form, but part of me thinks I won't every time
-Sushi (but none of the types involving anything cooked)
-Sushi-grade tuna steaks that are cooked really rare and are basically just sushi with a little bit of sear on the edges
-My dad made this awesome poached salmon on top of a palak paneer-like spinach mixture and that was quite good
-When there is enough other flavor in the dish that I can't actually taste the fish at all (such as baked in salsa)

That's pretty much it. I do, however, have a 'try anything once' policy when it comes to food--if I didn't I never would have eaten sushi and look where THAT would have gotten me--so I'll occasionally take a bite of someone else's fish if they order it somewhere. The result of that is usually that the bite was almost tolerable but there's no way I would eat an entire piece of fish. Luckily, I think, from these tastes, I've developed an ability to know if fish is prepared well, even if I don't like it myself. (Though if the fish smells fishy, I won't touch it. Sorry. The smell makes me nauseous.)

Anyway, Mike wanted fish on Friday, because he always eats fish on Good Friday, but he didn't want to make me make or eat fish. I decided that, in honor of his tradition, I would find a way to prepare fish so I could tolerate it, because otherwise we would have had to go to the store while there was some perch in the freezer that just needed defrosting. Unfortunately, the perch was frozen and I had to run it under hot water for a long time before I could break it apart, and once I'd run it under hot water the skin was all soggy and do you know how hard it is to skin a fish when the skin is soggy? (I will say, however, that I'm pretty damn good at skinning a fish. As much as I avoid it, I once worked in a grocery store deli/fish department and had to learn how to skin the fishes. Witnessing a contest between two other members of the department to see who was the better fish-skinner taught me how to be quite good at it.)

NOT QUITE A RECIPE: Edana's Approach to Fish
Ingredients
-some fish
-lots of breadcrumbs
-parmesan or romano cheese
-a relatively large amount of herbs and spices that you know you like and go well together
-butter

Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to whatever temperature the fish you're cooking should be baked at.
2. Mix the breadcrumbs, cheese and herbs/spices in a bowl.
3. Skin the fish if you weren't smart enough to have the people at the store do it for you. (This is a lot easier if the fish is fresh.) You can leave the skin on if you want, but I don't know why you'd want to do that. It always confuses me.
4. Melt the butter. Brush the fish with the butter. Cover the fish in the breadcrumbs mixture. Put it on a thoroughly oiled baking sheet.
5. Bake for required amount of time. (This is usually not very long. If you don't know, look it up, and check it after the smallest amount of time because overcooked, dry fish is even worse.)

I used a large amount of basil and a small amount of paprika. It came out in the "this doesn't taste so bad until after I swallow it, at which point my mouth tastes like fish" category. I was able to eat a whole (though quite small) fillet. Mike loved it and was very happy that I sacrificed myself for him like that. He seemed sort of surprised that I managed to be good at cooking fish despite my general refusal to have anything to do with it.

I realize this isn't all that spectacular of a dish to be blogging about, but since I've never made fish before, I thought it was worth mentioning that I did something new. (And I think at some point this turned into a rant. Whoops.) Maybe someday I'll make sushi, and I'll have made fish that I actually like eating.

Goldfish Rant

So, because I've made this a blog about FOOD and not simply COOKING, I can post things like this when I want to. And I do "disproportionately annoyed at stupid things" much better than I do cooking.

I like goldfish. I hadn't had them in a long time, but Mike bought some because they were on sale and he wanted to try the "S'mores Adventures" kind (the only adventure involved was an adventure in disappointment) and he got some normal ones for me. (On a side note, 'normal' goldfish are cheddar. One day someone offered me goldfish and gave me the 'original' flavor that tastes like oyster crackers. I don't even know why these exist. They're terrible. Everyone should know by now to just get the cheddar ones.) Anyway, I ate the goldfish and remembered that not only do I like goldfish, but I'm COMPLETELY ADDICTED to them. So I went to get another bag, but instead of getting the baby goldfish like he'd bought, I went for what I thought were just normal goldfish.

WHAT. IS THAT. I had no idea. I was confused and upset. Among my beautiful little sea of delicious fishies are these...circles? At first I could only think that they were jellyfish, or pufferfish, or some other sort of round sea creature. Mike told me they were basketballs, and I told him to stop being silly, I'm eating GOLDFISH, there aren't going to be BASKETBALLS in them. And then I looked at the package.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I don't look closely enough at my goldfish to make sure that the bag is JUST FISH, because they're called GOLDFISH. I assume that they will be fish. I don't think it should be necessary for me to look at the bag and make sure that the little picture in the corner doesn't have any weird shapes in it. Especially basketball shapes. I don't want to eat basketballs. It shouldn't be necessary for me to look at the package and make sure that I'm not buying basketball crackers. They are called GoldFISH and I expect them to stick to their name.

Also, I learned that I eat goldfish wrong. Well. I'm not really sure it's wrong, per se, but it's definitely weird. Instead of putting them in my mouth, I put them near my mouth and stick my tongue out, and it sticks to a goldfish, and I pull it into my mouth and eat it. Sometimes I get two. But I don't do the 'throw a handful of crackers into your mouth' thing. It's sort of like how a cat eats, so if you're curious, go watch a cat eat some dry food and that's what I look like when I eat goldfish.

Okay, that's the end of my rant. I sent in my last essay for my half-semester class today, so I only have four classes for the rest of the semester and that means FREE TIME! It also means the end of my "monday night paper panic" that I've grown used to. (I had a paper due every Monday at 10, so I'd get home from school around 3 and have to write a paper before House.) Anyway, this means that there will hopefully be more cooking and more blogging for the rest of the semester. Hooray!