Family, Food

Baked vs. Fried?

40 Comments

Yesterday morning YA got up earlier than her Sunday usual so we decided to go out to breakfast, choosing Blackbird as we hadn’t actually been since they re-located. I couldn’t decide between sourdough flapjacks or the huevos rancheros.

We talked about being picky eaters last week and I had to fess up that I have an issue with how foods feel in my mouth. Mushrooms and eggplant are the biggies on my “ick” list but I also have to say I’m not crazy about cooked raisins and cooked zucchini.  I like the flavor of all these things but just don’t like how they feel. Corn tortillas fall into a third category, where sometimes I can like them and sometimes I don’t like the “chewiness”.

This is what I was thinking about while I mulled over huevos rancheros this morning. I was in a good mood so figure I might as well give it a go.  After all, if I’m not happy about the corn tortilla, I can always eat all around it.

It looked fabulous as it came to the table and as I took my first bite I knew that the chefs at Blackbird had outdone themselves. Instead of just heating the tortilla, they fried it so it was crispy!  I’ve had huevos rancheros in many restaurants and have never before encountered one with a crispy tortilla.

When was the last time YOU were surprised by something different?

40 thoughts on “Baked vs. Fried?”

  1. Sandy eats those little Yoplait yogurt cups. One of the few things she can eat without it ever bothering her. I went out to get her a few vanilla cups Saturday. Neither Cub or HyVee had just vanilla, not vanilla light, which strangely can bother her, or the whipped. I bought five of thew whipped. SAhe will nbot eat them., so I had one last night. It would be expensive, but you could use that in place of whipped cream in places like strawberry short cake. I only like Greek yogurt, but the whipped was unexpected. Notreally great, but much more than I expected.

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    1. i like the greek yogurt too
      much of the dairy end of things started to get me messed up so i avoird it like a monkey bump. i may have to try it again. do you know how to make yogurt> it is the easiest recipe ever. greek especially. find the kind you like and put it in a bowl. put some some whole milk (1/2 gallon ir whatever the right amount is in another bowl and heat it up either in the microwave or on the stove in a pan. dont boil just heat it up good. throw in the desired yogurt starter and let it cool to room temperature. stir in vanilla and stick it in the fridge or tupperware and then in the fridge. vanilla whole milk greek is my choice too. i dont know why they offer all those other choices. i dont think they need to be there at all

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      1. Not all brands of yogurt carry a live culture and I’m pretty sure Yoplait doesn’t, so it’s unsuitable as a starter. When we used to make yogurt, we used plain Old Home yogurt, which does include a live culture and is a good, generally unadultrated yogurt.

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    3. Yoplait puts out a “French Style Yogurt” called “Oui” in a neat little glass jar (foil top) – non GMO, so gunky ingredients… They got me on the packaging (I could use these little jars for custard cups or something), but it’s thick and surprisingly good…

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      1. Reminds me of when YA was younger and we bought (and ate) a whole case of mandarin oranges in cans w/ pull top lids so I could use the cans for a craft project!

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    4. I’ve never been much of a fan of Yoplait yogurts, which is ironic because I am sometimes involved with groups from General Mills trying to invent new line extensions for their product. Yoplait incorporates too much food science in the production of what should be a simple and natural product. They got into contention with other yogurt makers when they introduced their line of Greek yogurts. General Mills was adding milk solids to their yogurt to make a thicker product instead of straining out some of the whey and so they were challenged on authenticity.
      The original Yoplait yogurt in the tapered cup (known in the trade as a Vercon cup) is too runny for my taste. Reminds me of Pepto-Bismol.

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  2. i was pleasantly surprised by my mechanics son over the weekend. my mechanic is a guy from africa who i got from a favorite employee at the car parts store before she departed for greener pastures. he is a guy who speaks in such a thick accent it is difficult to understand sometimes. i have worked with him for 3 or 4 years and he is great at some things and wont touch others. he is in africa until august visiting his family and his son is on call for repairs. my moms car creaked and groaned last week and so i called him got his machine which sent me to his son and we lined up a time for the house call. they like to work in the outdoors if possible so saturday was a hot one and the problems were compounded by the car not cooperating with the replacement process sometimes it goes the way it is supposed to sometimes it needs more nudging. my guy was not able to figure it out on saturday and he said it wouldnt go. i told him it had to go. you dont throw the car away because the part doesnt go in easily. he looked at me strangely and said he would go home and study it and come back tomorrow so when he returned on sunday i went out to work with him and when i explained to him that there had to be a way and we just and to find it. he agreed to do this with me and after an hour or so we had figured it out.
    he was very happy to achieve the impossible and was a good student of the get er done philosophy i need from my service folk.
    i am ordering parts for two more cars to be done next week. he did a job that would have been 2000 dollars at the dealer for 300 with used parts and a little urging from me to get er done.
    next weeks jobs are 800 dollars worth for 75 dollars and 400 dollars worth for 50 dollars. i can keep cars going with the right mechanic. i was pleased to find a good one in my guys kid. anyone need a littel car work done? i can send him over.

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  3. Small dogs. Never thought I’d have one – let alone two. Grew up with big dogs, had two basset hounds. And now two dogs who weigh less than 40 lbs between them (makes me wonder if the household dog limit is based on weight & volume, not number). Mostly have not been fond of small dogs – with a couple of exceptions I have found them to be irritating and yappy. These two, however, fall into the same goofy personality camp that drew me to the more laconic bassets – higher energy than the hounds, but that doesn’t take much.

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        3. I don’t think Anna announced the second one on the trail. I knew about it because she posted a photo of the new photo on FB a couple of weeks ago.

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        5. Second one was added in early May (first on a test to ensure that the older one didn’t get her nose out of joint about not being an “only dog” anymore). It happened during a period of AnnaSortaDroppedOffthePlanet…

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        7. Second one is Potato (which started because we met her when she was just days old and looked like an unbaked potato…it, for better or worse, stuck). So we have Sugar and Potato. Try as I might, I can’t get anyone in the family – including the dogs – on board with renaming them Lucy and Ethel…

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    3. Many people dislike small dogs, and yet many people love them. That might not be as contradictory as it sounds. Small dogs are often yappy and semi-hostile to strangers, which hardly endears those folks to small dogs. But with their owners, small dogs are usually laid back and happy to snuggle.

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      1. I find that, as with people, it’s not the size or shape of the dog that determines whether or not I enjoy their company, it’s their personality. Smaller dogs are easier to snuggle with, and they don’t have the capability to steel food off of counters. But I’ve had dogs of many sizes that have been absolute delights, although I’ve never gad a truly big dog. Our 80 lb. Daisy, a yellow lab, was probably the biggest dog we’ve had, and she was a sweetie; so if our 20 lb. Bernie.

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      2. French bulldogs are a fairly outgoing, friendly breed – so not hostile to strangers. Our black one can be a bit shy, but she warms up very quickly. The (younger) puppy is pretty sure everyone is her new best friend.

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  4. On our 40th-anniversary trip to Toronto last month, my wife and I ate dinner at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place, Papa Giuseppe’s, in Mississauga (a “suburb” of Toronto with 700,000+ people!). My wife has decided to avoid wheat for health reasons, so she’s been eating gluten-free most of the time. She’s gone so far as to make her own GF flour mixture, and we’ve tried numerous iterations of GF bread, pizza crust, pasta, etc. So far, nothing tasted even close to comparable to wheat products, until the GF pizza she ordered at Papa Giuseppe’s!. Wow, was that ever tasty! Obviously not as good as regular pizza crust, but highly acceptable. Nice crunch and chew, not gummy, and flavorful.

    I wonder if they deliver …

    **Blatant Self Promotion (BSP)** For all you book lovers out there who may be cruising SE along the Mississippi River on Saturday, July 7, I’ll be signing copies of Castle Danger at Fair Trade Books in Red Wing from 11-2. Barbara In Rivertown, you’re especially invited since you live in that area. 🙂 It’s always great to connect with TBers about books. Hope to see some of you there.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. Different: I’m applying for a receptionist job at my chiropractor’s office – IF there is someone else to do a job-share with, making it half-time which apparently there might be. If that transpires, my life will be very different. There will be weekly or monthly things I have to give up at least part of the time. I will need a refresher on how to budget my time, I’ll have an excuse to say “no” more often; and I’ll learn what my priorities really are. Hmmmm…

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  6. I may have already written about this “different experience”. Needing to get out of the cottage even with two master’s degrees a few years ago, I decided that most social setting there was was Caribou coffee in its premier stores. I soon found out that I couldn’t multi task. At all. It frightened me to be on the bar making drinks more than one of a time. My cash-outs, no matter how hard I tried, were anywhere between five bucks off up to my record $125 off. Ultimately, I poisoned a guest by putting cleaning fluid in her drink. Not my fault: three expresso machines had little plastic cups below the expresso producing spout. They all looked the same to me. How could I know that one of them was being cleaned???? When my hours were suddenly cut, I told the manager I wanted more than three hours. Response: “You’ll NEVER get more than three hours in this store!” Thoroughly humiliated that someone with two masters couldn’t handle a $7.25/hr, job, I slinked out of there and determined that I’m not someone who fits in the real world.

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    1. I’d heard about the Caribou stance and that it didn’t go well, but I don’t recall that you poisoned a customer. Love this story a,d I assume the customer lived or you’d be sharing a cell with LJB. Doing any kind of service job where you’re waiting on customers is so much harder than people realize.

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    3. Anyone who has done a three month stint as a waiter or waitress can attest to the fact that it’s not an easy job. I’ll never forget the night at the Hubb Cafe in Carbondale when a young man came in an ordered a banana split. Having never heard of a banana split, I asked my coworker what it was. She showed me the dish used to serve it in, and told me about the three kinds of ice cream, whipped cream and maraschino cherries, but failed to mention the banana. Imagine the surprise of my customer when I served him my very first banana split without a banana.

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  7. I had dinner last week at a place in my old home town called Pudge’s. Pudge’s was a bar that featured pool tables and foosball in the 70’s. It also had an “off sale” license, so it was a common place to pick up a six pack of beer on a Friday night. It was, essentially, a dive. It’s now under new ownership and has been extensively remodeled. It now has a wine list, several outdoor seating areas on two floors, artwork, a guy playing piano upstairs. Quite upscale now. I had salmon with “cheve smashed potatoes” (?), sautéed vegetables, and tomato basil soup. It was all SO GOOD. It probably would not surprise most people who were not familiar with the original Pudge’s, but I was floored.

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  8. I went to elementary and middle school with a short, stout girl named Brenda. She was given the nickname Putt Putt because she ran so slow in gym class. She moved when we were in Grade 7. She came back for a visit when we were seniors. We didn’t know what to think when this tall, slim, gorgeous young woman strolled down the hall way. “Did you see Putt Putt”? was on everyone’s lips.

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  9. As you know, I’m a sometime chicken and cat sitter for my friend Helen. At the moment Helen and Sarah are on a two week road trip, and I’m in charge of the household until they return.

    Yesterday I received a message from Helen that I’d be receiving a box of bread from a bakery in Maine containing seven loaves of bread. I was instructed to take a couple of the loaves for Hans and me, and give a couple to some mutual friends who live in the neighborhood. Helen was told by the baker that the bread freezes well, but that it’s a good idea to slice it prior to doing so. Then she requested that I freeze a couple of loaves for her with the caveat “if there’s room in the freezer.”

    The bread arrived today, and it is quite lovely, although it was obvious that the baker does not have a lot of experience shipping bread. Several loaves were quite squished, and the box was falling apart.

    I managed to contact the two neighbor friends to hand off their bread, and Hans, bless his heart, sliced Helen and Sarah’s loaves. Tonight, when I went to close up the chicken coop I discovered that, of course, there’s no room in Helen’s freezer. No room at all. I may be able to sandwich in a couple of slices of bread, but certainly not two loaves.

    I was also advised to keep an eye out for “some” boxes from her sister Karen who is in the process of relocating from Grand Forks to Connecticut. Karen’s husband, Ray, has been establishing a Department of Public Health at North Dakota State University for the last three years. Mission accomplished they are retiring to Connecticut to be near their only grand child. Karen and Ray are both brilliant people who have had impressive careers as university professors, but don’t have an ounce of common sense between them.

    I called Karen to ask when her boxes would be arriving, how many there are, what they weigh, and with whom she had shipped them. Turns out there are ten boxes, each weighing between twenty and twenty-five pounds, and that they’ll be delivered by the U.S. Mail. The reason she had them sent to Helen’s house, as opposed to their new home in Connecticut with the rest of their belongings, is this: She didn’t have time to cull the books and papers in those ten boxes, and she intends do that at Helen’s house before she ships them to their final destination!

    Helen is a very dear friend of mine, but really, this is more than I signed up for. I didn’t even mention trying to keep her twenty or so flower boxes watered through this heat wave and maintaining her kombucha while they’re gone. Kitten and the chickens are the least of it. Can’t wait till they return on Sunday. I’m pooped.

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