Tag: buffet

eating while your wife shops

As I mentioned in the last post, I was recently in Branson with the in-laws on vacation for a weekend, and I knew the women would be doing some shopping.  There’s a few outlet malls there, plus the newer promenade mall.  I can take only so much shopping, unless it’s for electronics or games.

I was talking about this with one of my friends, and he had an interesting suggestion for something I could do while the women are shopping:

Find an all-you-can-eat buffet and try to make a day of it. If your wife mentions that you probably don’t need to eat that much, you can always reference the fact that she probably doesn’t really need to shop that much either. Tell her that the sooner she gets back from shopping to pick you up, that is the sooner you will stop eating.

I like this idea.  It would tie-in with the idea of the last post where a store offers an atmosphere for men along with lots of nachos and other good eats.  But even without such a place, there are plenty of all-you-can-eat restaurants in Branson.  If my wife thinks I should eat less to help me lose weight, she can shop less, which will save money.  So it’s a win-win situation!

I mentioned this idea to my wife, but she failed to see the logic of it…

review of Paula Deen’s restaurant

This past weekend I ate at Paula Deen Buffet restaurant at Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, MS.  For those of you who don’t know who she is, she’s one of the stars on The Food Network, and she’s famous for Southern-style cooking.  She’s also famous for using butter in almost everything she cooks.  As you might guess, the food was great.  I don’t even want to know how many calories I consumed.

The restaurant has 7 different buffet lines, and none of them were the kind that are just there for looks (like fruit*) — there was something scrumptious on every one.   The fried chicken was the best I’d ever eaten from a restaurant — it was very close to what my mom makes.  The baked macaroni and cheese was incredible.  I could go on and on about how great the food is.  Let’s just say I could eat there every day.   I do need to mention that one of the buffet lines has only desserts, and from the ones I sampled, it was all good.  I have to recommend the chocolate ooey-gooey butter bars — I even brought back a box of those for later.   🙂

If you ever get the chance to eat there, by all means, do so.  (I wonder what needs to happen to get one of those to open in central Arkansas…)

* I have nothing against fruit, but when I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’m not there for fruit.

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!

Buffet o’ Bacon 3

Last night I had the Buffet o’ Blog staff over for a regular team outing (where we played video games and discussed funny stuff — how meetings should go!).  As has happened before, this meeting turned into a Buffet o’ Bacon.  It was kinda like an Iron Chef episode, where 3 contestants brought an original dish based around bacon.  (At these impromptu cooking sessions, the theme is always bacon.  Not that I’m complaining!)

First on the menu was bacon-wrapped smokies covered with barbecue sauce and grilled, and served on a stick.

smokies, bacon, & BBQ, on a stick

That one used turkey bacon, which works better for grilling and is a lot healthier.  The taste was really good.  You just have to make sure the bacon is cooked to the point of getting slightly crispy, or it’ll be easier to notice it’s turkey bacon.

The second item we sampled was bacon-wrapped cream-cheese-filled jalapenos.   We removed the seeds so they wouldn’t be too spicy (for some).  These were also delicious, although I’d like to experiment with different types of cheese.  Cooking them on a rack is essential (as I will explain in further detail on the next item).  They were also served on a stick (well, a toothpick).

bacon-wrapped cheese-filled jalapenos

Third on our list was the most ambitious creation, and the one that slightly concerned me.  It consisted of club crackers topped with shredded cheese, then bacon-wrapped and cooked for two hours at 250 degrees.  Here’s a picture of them during preparation.

bacon-wrapped club crackers, with cheese, in preparation

Notice there was no rack used to elevate the food above the inevitable bacon grease.  Supposedly it wasn’t necessary according to the recipe, that the crackers wouldn’t absorb all the grease.  I was concerned because we’ve been down this road before.  /* flashback */ At the initial Buffet o’ Bacon, there were some bacon-wrapped croissants, and the bread absorbed almost all the bacon grease during cooking.  The consistency of the croissants was like butter at room temperature, and it was deemed the “gut-bomb”.  (Read the second comment on our initial Buffet o’ Bacon for an explanation.)  /* end flashback */ So how did it turn out?  Let’s have a look:

bacon-wrapped club crackers, with cheese

What’s missing from this picture is the grease that was drained before I got in there with the camera.  Supposedly there was a pool of grease.  And if it isn’t evident in the picture, the crackers were saturated with grease, along with the cheese, and the bacon was quite greasy also.  Someone looked at the recipe to see where they went wrong, and they noticed the last line of the recipe said to cook it on a rack over a pan.  Obviously that line was never read, and the excuse was used that the picture included with the recipe didn’t have a rack in it.

We each tried a couple of them, and you could tell there was a lot of potential there, if not for the extreme load of grease.  The rest were discarded, for the sake of healthiness.   Hopefully a lesson was learned from this, because it’s really sad to throw away bacon and cheese.  (Should we have a moment of silence?)

If you want to read about our previous bacon research sessions, the link to part one is above, and here’s part two.  There are other food-related experiments and discussions — too many to list — but you can search for them if you want.

For those of you who live nearby and would like to participate in one of these in the future, there has been talk of hosting one on a Saturday afternoon and making a party out of it.  Stay tuned to this blog for further details.