Category: Viewer Mail

finding the best fried chicken

Somebody recently used our (underutilized) “Contact Us” form to ask: “Where’s the best fried chicken?” I can answer this one.

This was at Monte Ne Inn. All they serve is fried chicken and sides. You get a table, and they bring the food out. There’s no ordering, except for a drink and then later cobbler with ice cream (which is also great). They bring all the food you want. Worth a visit if you’re ever in northwest Arkansas.

The best fried chicken is at my mom’s house. Unfortunately, her house is not open as a restaurant, so you don’t get to experience it. I can tell you about how she makes it, though. She buys the whole chicken, cuts it up, puts on a breading, and fries it. Then she uses the grease to make gravy (milk-based, Southern style) to go on biscuits and homemade mashed potatoes. This is one of the best meals possible. It’s time-consuming, but worth it.

Which restaurant has the best fried chicken? That’s hard to answer. I don’t often get fried chicken at restaurants anymore because it’s somewhat disappointing by comparison. I would recommend looking for some country-style kitchen where they cook everything from scratch. Find one that’s not a chain, where it’s older people working there, who cook for others because they like to. A place where the food is cooked to be delicious, rather than squeezing out more profits. A place where they use real butter. We have a few of these where I live, and the food is consistently good.

There are probably chain restaurants with good fried chicken. You could ask for suggestions from friends who have similar taste preferences. If you ask online, you’ll get answers that will include almost every restaurant*. Perhaps you should make this your own adventure quest: over the next few months, try different restaurants to see whose is the best. It’s a fun time. 🙂

I wish I had more answers on this. Ultimately, the best option is learning to cook it yourself. It’s more work that way, but it tastes better, and it saves you money, too.

* I saw this with an online discussion for the best pizza place in my town. It was funny for how absurd it was. People listed every single pizza place there is, including gas stations and the lowest-cost pizza places where the main emphasis is the low-cost. Someone mentioned a place that’s more famous for children’s games and parties, where the pizza is definitely not high quality. I don’t want to dis’ them by name, because they all have a role, if that’s what you’re looking for, and we all have our preferences. But to say they have the best pizza is absurd. I recommend asking friends who like the same restaurants as you.

What do you think about the idea of a food adventure quest where you find the best instance of a type of food in your city?

viewer mail, issue #18

One of the regular readers here recently mentioned that we haven’t put out an issue of viewer mail in a while.  They are correct.   And there is no good excuse for it, because it’s a fun series, and there’s plenty of material to work with.  Perhaps the writers are slackers.  So to light a fire under them, I told them they had to put out a new episode of viewer mail or they’d go to bed without supper.  That is sufficient motivation, so now we have the next issue of viewer mail.

As usual, this is based on actual search terms used to find this blog, and I’ll focus on the ones we haven’t already written extensively about.

Click image to see a larger, more tempting picture.

* large sausage & bacon sandwich — My dream of the future is that someday we’ll be able to download stuff like this.  Just type it in at a certain site (or select it from pictures), and it’s downloaded through the Internet.  Although I wonder if the tubes of the Internet are subject to artery clogging… Why would I worry about that, though?  I’m American!  Here’s the kind of breakfast sandwich I would download — bacon, sausage, copious amounts of cheese, held together by grilled cheese with bacon.   (There could hardly be a better breakfast sandwich, unless you add some milk gravy.)

* buffet calories — This is an invalid request.  The whole nature of a food buffet is unlimited, so if you’re wanting to count calories, you should avoid a buffet.  The great part of a buffet is that you get to eat what you want, in whatever combination you want, and however much you want.  That’s why it’s called “all you can eat”.   If you don’t eat all you can eat, you’re getting ripped off, because that’s what you paid for.

* homer simpson freak out — Your search returned 7,352,809 results.   🙂

* barack obama thinking — Your search returned 0 results.   (That was too easy…)

* super awesome bacon sandwhich — See above.  Actually, there are a number of bacon sandwiches (and other awesome bacon foodstuffs) documented here.  You can click on the “Food Critic” category, and many will either start with bacon or have it added.  (It’s inevitable that someone will always say “needs more bacon”.)   One of the Food Critic entries is a massively stacked , with many layers of bacon.  You can also search for our Buffet o’ Bacon series, where we conduct our own bacon recipe research, involving the Buffet o’ Blog important chefs (of which there are several).  There you’ll find some bacon dishes you’ve probably never thought of before, and it may make you hungry.  🙂

* women have bad moods — Your search returned 380,599,248,107 results.  (I hope I don’t get in trouble for that!)

I’d better wrap this up before things get too crazy.   Actually, I suddenly have a powerful craving for bacon…  Time to exit stage right to search for bacon!

viewer mail, Christmas day special

Traffic here at the blog was at the lowest point of the year on Christmas Day (and it was still 223 pageloads).  This is understandable, because we aren’t posting new content around that time, and most people are probably spending time with their families and playing with their new toys.  Since fewer people are browsing the Internet that day, I had to wonder what people were searching for.  I’m going to limit the results just to what brought people to this blog, and I’m going to remove some of the similar entries.  (Also, only a certain number of search terms are stored for each day, so this may not be everything.)

Here’s the partial list of search terms that brought people here on Christmas Day (with the number of searches using that term):

basketball    34
sumo wrestling    11
poop    10
mount rushmore    8
basketball pictures    6
tank    6
sherman tank    5
funny christmas lights    4
bad hair    4
swedish goat fire    4
bad hair day    3
weird christmas quotes    3
pics of amazing lights on houses on chri    2
homer simpson + toilet paper    2
hair bands    2
fry turkey accident    2
pictures of deep frying turkeys gone wro    2
the burger king guy    2
poop in toilet    2
turkey frying accidents    2
pooping dog    2
beaker bunsen    2
bacon bbq    2
halo    2
carnivore pizza    2
truck driving    2
mr t    2
bacon crackers & shredded cheese    2
christmas straw goat    1
funny soccer celebrations    1
mountain dew ingredients explained funny    1
30 pound pizza man vs. food    1
“monstrosity” “burger”    1
facts about toilet    1
muppets professor    1
little mac mike tyson’s punch out    1
fat men dancing    1
covered in post it notes    1
cheese empanadas    1
wii for fat people    1
obama afro    1
bacon ham buffet    1
swedish christmas straw goat    1
worms in feces    1
homer simpsons wise sentites    1
bad mood no reason    1

There you have it.  Are you surprised?  Imagine someone on Christmas Day searching for “fat men dancing” or “worms in feces” or “poop in toilet”.  I reckon some people spend their Christmas day a lot differently than I do…  🙂  To each their own…  But it’s not a problem, because we’re open 24/7, and pages of randomness are served even if no one is in the office.  That’s one of the neat things about technology…

BTW, if you found this page via an Internet search, we’re written about most of these topics, and you can search just this blog using the search box in the sidebar.

viewer mail, issue #16

It’s long past time for another issue of viewer mail.  As usual, I take some of the actual search terms that led people to this blog, and I provide the information they were looking for.  Well, there’s no guarantee it’s the actual info they wanted, but hopefully it’ll be funny.  🙂  I may not know everything (just 98%, give or take 3%), but I know humor.  But enough about my extensive reserves of knowledge!  Let’s get to the search terms.

* “laughing is important” — I completely agree!  And science agrees also.  Some studies suggest that laughing heartily every day can add 7 years to your life.  So obviously laughing is important!  That’s why I write on this blog — to help people laugh, which promotes good physical and mental health.  So subscribe to the blog, for your health’s sake!   🙂  And tell your friends about it!

Barack Obama tossing a football in his office* will people realize obama is a joke — I’ve wondered this myself, thinking perhaps all of President Barack Obama’s strange doings were part of some huge April Fools joke.  But that day has come and gone, and there was no announcement.  I’m afraid this is reality, that Obama will be the U.S. President through 2012.   He’s who the people wanted.   (I won’t say he won fair and square, because of ACORN type groups, but McCain sure helped him out with a poorly planned campaign.)  Let’s just hope Obama doesn’t make too many changes to America.  People want some change, such as removing corruption and increasing transparency and fixing the economy, and so far Obama has not given us that type of change (despite his campaign promises).

* arguing teddy bears — Normally teddy bears are passive, peaceful creatures, choosing to bring comfort to little children everywhere, so if yours are arguing, then there’s some problems.   Usually all you have to do to keep them happy is hug them.  If all else fails, you could let them fight it out.   I realize that sounds violent, but teddy bears don’t have claws, and they are plushy, so no harm will come to them.  Perhaps letting them release their aggression is the solution you are looking for.  Then again, arguing and fighting is no in their nature, so perhaps you are exposing them to too much of that stuff… maybe you should look in the mirror for your solution… 😮

obese-man* all you can eat belly — Well, if it isn’t obvious, here’s a picture.  But know that this is only after repeated use.  Enjoying all-you-can-eat buffets no more than once per week should be okay, but going there every day or two will lead to being fat.  There’s been a lot of research on this, which should be obvious.

* ice cream nachos — One might assume that combining two of mankind’s greatest food inventions would be a sure thing, but in this case it might not be.  I haven’t tried it, nor do I plan to.   Here’s what I recommend: eat your nachos, drink lots of sweet tea, and THEN eat your ice cream (topped with Oreos and/or Hershey’s Syrup).  Stay with that plan, and you can’t hardly go wrong.  (Well, don’t do this every day, for reasons illustrated by the previous topic.)

* build your own particle accelerator — This would be interesting, if you had the tools to conduct the research these are typically used for.  Hopefully you are searching for educational purposes only — this should not be used as a weapon.  Some scientists are concerned that high-powered particle accelerators could theoretically create black holes, which could obviously be dangerous, since they are the deadliest force in the universe.  Which, of course, means they are not a toy.

* can a man wear black bel and brown shoes — What kind of question is that?  Of course, a man can wear a black belt with brown shoes.  Men aren’t required to follow fashion trends nor to follow those imaginary rules concerning what matches and what doesn’t.  Besides, black matches everything.   🙂  Women pay more mind to these rules, and from what I’ve heard, they tend to judge each other very critically over those non-written fashion rules.  But with men it’s a different story.  In most cases, a guy’s friends won’t even notice what he’s wearing.  Besides, men need to reassert themselves and wear what they like and what is comfortable.

That’s all, folks!   Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, same blog time, same blog channel.