Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Homemade French onion soup! It’s not hard, but it is time consuming. It’s relatively inexpensive (except for the fancy cheese). Here’s how I make it:

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Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/25/10 at 10:34 PM
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

If you don’t dig on swine or have cholesterol issues, kindly avert your eyes from the above photo and do not read this recipe. These pork chops are fried—so help me god!—in a combination of bacon grease and Crisco.

INGREDIENTS:

—Pork chops
—Flour
—Salt
—Pepper
—Garlic powder
—Paprika

DIRECTIONS:

Fry a pound of bacon in a large skillet for breakfast. Save the grease. Add a dollop or two of Crisco to achieve a fat-depth in the skillet of about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch (depending on the thickness of your chops—the grease should be deep enough so they’ll be half submerged). Heat to medium-high.

Place dry ingredients in paper bag. Rinse chops in water, place ‘em in the bag and shake vigorously. Add coated chops to skillet and fry until golden brown on both sides.

While the chops are frying, dump the flour mixture into the trash and flatten the paper bag to serve as a grease-draining platform for the chops once they’re cooked.

Serve with whatever fixings you like. These chops were consumed with steamed fresh green beans tossed with a little Italian dressing.

PS: This sort of cooking earned me my nickname—and subsequent internet pseudonym—from my elitist New Yorker husband.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/17/10 at 08:02 PM
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

It was jarring enough that Michele Bachmann trotted out a token black person for her Tea Party Caucus presser , but then onlookers were thoroughly confused when she unhinged her lower jaw and swallowed the baby whole.

This is going to be a weird, weird election season.

Posted by Tom65 on 07/22/10 at 07:57 PM
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Saturday, July 17, 2010

Two weird stories out today:

♦ Voice of America reports that three journalists have been arrested by Ivory Coast officials after publishing details of a secret inquiry into corruption in the nation’s cocoa industry.

♦ Meanwhile, yesterday, an unidentified buyer purchased Europe’s entire supply of cocoa beans—some 241,000 tons.

Either George Soros hates Halloween, or Mr. Slugworth ain’t fuckin’ around anymore.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/17/10 at 04:15 PM
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Friday, July 09, 2010

Way too hot for Usquaebach or Patrón Reposado, and beer wicks off your skin faster than Witch Hazel. However, a fistful of this and a couple of fingers of Looza Banana Nectar will make politics seem edgy and interesting all over again.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/09/10 at 03:19 PM
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Via Zandar at Steve M’s joint, we learn about the world’s worst tipper, a Minnesota goober-natorial hopeful named Tom Emmer:

Minnesota state Rep. Tom Emmer, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has put forward a new policy for helping the state’s businesses: Lowering the minimum wage for waiters and waitresses, and forcing them to rely more heavily on tips…

Emmer’s proposal would get rid of Minnesota’s law against using that credit, and thus bring the minimum wages for restaurant staff and other gratuity-based workers down to $2.13 per hour plus tips, a reduction of nearly two-thirds. Emmer said this proposal would result in a “level playing field so the employers can continue to exist, survive and thrive.”

That makes sense, because everyone knows it’s the fat cat Waffle House waitresses who are bringing our economy to its knees.

Back when I was attending an elite (football) university learning to become a creative class parasite, I had an honest job slinging hash. I’m not proud of it, but my fellow servers and I had several methods of exacting revenge on obnoxious customers.

I’d advise Emmer and anyone who even remotely looks like him in Minnesota to stick to take-out or home cooking. Forever.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 07/06/10 at 07:00 AM
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Monday, July 05, 2010

Given that he stole the recipe for mac & cheese from the Italians, Declaration Boy has a lot of nerve busting this woman’s balls for heating up a plastic pouch she bought at Piggly Wiggly.

On the other hand, if he’d kicked her ass for serving shitty synthetic food-wads to her holiday guests when she lives in a million-dollar fenced McMansion, I could get down with that.

“Authentic” Jefferson mac & cheese video recipe is below the fold.

H/T Betty Cracker for setting today’s theme of Campy, Mass-Market Americana.

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Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/05/10 at 09:08 AM
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Sunday, July 04, 2010

A perfect complement to the Quick and Easy Tea Party Candidate Cake.

So what are you doing today? What are people in your part of the country talking about?

Posted by Kevin K. on 07/04/10 at 09:30 AM
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Friday, July 02, 2010

Like all holidays, the 4th of July is an obligatory, bullshit celebration that will inevitably force you to share oxygen with pin-headed Wingnut primates you can’t legally kill and who refuse to leave because they drove all the way from Bumfuck, Idaho in their mint-restored ‘71 HemiCuda but are too cheap to spring for a room at the Super 8. Now, however, you can whip up a simple, appealing Third Party Spoiler that’s guaranteed to plunge them into a self-annihilating ideological null-space you can fill with any room-temperature Democrat who’s not currently under indictment.

You will need the following ingredients:

♦  8 cups baking soda
♦  45 egg whites (Separate non-white portions and mail any fetal chicks to Liberty University for proper, reverent disposal and mourning.)
♦  1 cup Mother Moose’s® Permanent Fund Dividend Oil-Based Attention Shortening
♦  1 tri-cornered hat (Pulled or minced.)
♦  1 Gadsden Flag (Snake bits only. Trim them out of the yellow field, and save the excess fabric to make patriotic ammo-cozies.)
♦  1 pocket version of the US Constitution (with the 16th Amendment and Commerce Clause carefully stripped out, and the remainder vigorously whisked until only the 2nd and 10th Amendments remain floating on top of the foam.)
♦  1 GRUCCI MINESHELL MAYHEM assortment pack (or the LIVE FREE OR DIE® 21-Shot crackling fan buster-box or the BADA BING BADA BOOM 19-Shot destructo-sampler.)
♦  2 tbsp. Milk of Common Sense® or other artificial education-substitute
♦  1 tsp. Bachmann Bitters
♦  Rick Barber’s Scary Dead Presidents® Brand coarse, unseasoned, tax-free Salt of the Earth, sprinkled to taste.

Stir ingredients until the mixture resists logic and clings to God or a gun. Trowel into a flat, shallow, irony-free pan. Bake at highest available oven temperature for one minute, or until explosions, whistling and “mweep-mwow” noises become unbearable. (Refer to above video for bake-time clues and finished cake reference dimensions and sounds.) Allow 15 minutes for cake to cool and stop moaning, then drape with red-white-and-blue bunting for a rube-pleasing presentation.

Voy-la! You have a vote-splitting, RINO-killing, meal-ending taste-treat that serves 10-12 members of “We the People,” or can be grudgingly redistributed to 100+ illegal immigrants and non-producing Liberal parasites.

And isn’t that what Freedom’s all about?

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 07/02/10 at 10:44 PM
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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Okay, so my husband, Señor Cracker, is the greatest dad in the galaxy. (Truly, he is—cross Atticus Finch with the pilot dad in Mad Max and throw in a measure of Oscar Peterson for the piano skills. Pretty farkin’ impressive!) 

Anyhoo, such a paragon is King of the World on Father’s Day and is thus entitled to whatever meal his heart desires. Really—anything, as if the poor bastard were about to be executed.

The menu he chose: Shrimp Etouffee over rice with crusty bread and key lime pie for dessert. Well!

Homemade key lime pie is a bitch when our own local key limes are out of season! I had to juice an entire pound of absurdly small key limes from Mexico. Our Florida ones are juicy, but the damn Mexican ones from our particular grocery store yielded approximately 5 drops of juice apiece, and the pie requires 2/3rds of a cup. Here’s what a pound of juiced Mexican key limes looks like:

Then, after the pie was baked and set to cool, I made the Etouffee, which starts with a roux. Y’all know a goddamn roux will break your heart, right?

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Posted by Betty Cracker on 06/20/10 at 07:13 PM
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Saturday, June 12, 2010

Just like everything else connected with Taitz, this is one of the most ridiculous things you will ever encounter in your life… [h/t CityCountryMe]

p.s. I’m the proud owner of this masterwork by Dan Lacey. And Taitz should be glad she’s not Paula Deen. More on the story here.

Posted by Kevin K. on 06/12/10 at 02:44 PM
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Friday, June 11, 2010

Calabacitas is Spanish for zucchini and there will be lots of that available in the coming months!  It is generally sauteed with onions, chiles, fresh corn and seasonings then simmered in a creamy sauce.  Add some special love with a little fresh cilantro - YUM.  (Oh calm down.  It’s optional.)  Most southwestern cooks have their own recipe.  Mine after the fold.

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Posted by marindenver on 06/11/10 at 09:25 AM
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Friday, June 04, 2010

South Carolina politics just never gets boring! In today’s development, the slack-jawed dimwit above (who is Indian-American GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley’s Republican colleague in the SC Statehouse) called the governor wannabe a “raghead:”

[GOP State Senator Jake] Knotts appeared on a Columbia internet talk show and used a racial slur to describe both Haley and Obama.

The program is called “Pub Politics” and on it Knotts said “We already got one raghead in the White House, We don’t need a raghead in the Governor’s Mansion.”

This was too much even for the South Carolina GOP, which called on Knotts to apologize. His response:

“I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I do apologize to both for an unintended slur.”

And it was unintended too, you skeptics! I can understand where Ol’ Jake is coming from, since I never actually intended to call him an inbred, pea-brained, cretinous bigot who should go choke on a bowl of chicken-fried dicks. Oops! I hate it when that happens…

[Note: the image of a farmhand breakfast appearing in Senator Knotts’ thought-bubble coincidentally appeared in an advertisement next to his photo at the link above. I don’t think it’s his real breakfast, though. No grits.]

Posted by Betty Cracker on 06/04/10 at 09:43 AM
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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Posted by Kevin K. on 05/20/10 at 07:53 AM
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I don’t eat my vegetables like I should. Or at least, I didn’t until I mastered vegetable roasting, which unlocks the flavor in a way the boiled-with-pig-chunks technique favored in these parts never did.

I made the above exactly as Giada De Laurentiis directed here, except I forgot to add the cherry tomatoes, and I used angel hair pasta rather than bowtie.

Unlike just about every pasta primavera recipe I’ve tried, it doesn’t feature a lot of green veggies—no broccoli, no asparagus—though I suppose you could add that if you felt strongly about it. Anyway, it is fast, foolproof and fit for a king. Highly recommended.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 05/19/10 at 06:59 PM
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