Budget Booze

Well, value booze would probably be a more accurate title, but it lacks that alliteration I love so much. Basically, I'm going to throw out names of a few items I think offer great bang for the buck. Today, I'll talk rum and vodka, since they tend to be alcoholic staples for me. Prices based on the big 1.75L bottles unless otherwise noted.

Cruzan Estate  - Quite possibly the best value in anything ever. I can usually find it for a mere $12, and what's in the bottle actually tastes good. Both the light and dark are smooth as can be.

Mount Gay Eclipse - Typically costs a Jackson, and tastes as good if not better than a fair number of rums I've tried at twice the price.

Luksusowa - A Polish import and one of the few readily available potato vodkas on the market. Also one of the smoothest vodkas I've ever had. I know of little that even comes close to matching it within $15 or more of the $20-24 price range where I usually find it.

Crockpot chicken tacos

Ingredients:
6 chicken breasts
2 onions, chopped
2 bell peppers, chopped
1 jar salsa

Tools:
1 slow cooker
2 forks
1 knife

Time:
5-10 minutes prep
4-8 hours cooking time

Set the chicken breasts in the bottom of the crockpot. Roughly chop or dice the bell peppers and onions and place on top of the chicken breasts. Pour the jar of salsa over the other ingredients. Set the crockpot for at least 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low.

Once cooking is done, shred the chicken with a couple of forks. Use the chicken/salsa mixture in your favorite tortillas or taco shells and top as desired.

The original recipe was e-mailed to me by a friend. I've slightly modified it since then, but the recipe is hard to screw up and easy to alter to suit individual tastes. I often add key lime juice to the mix myself.

Fast food staples

Because of the whole 'trying to be less of a fattie' thing, I obviously can't eat fast food terribly often. Certain places/items break the diet far less than others though, so certain chains have been getting a lot more of my business over the last 1.5 years.

Wendy's - Even with the dressing, most of their salads aren't awful for you, and they taste pretty damn good. The various wraps also fill one up with tastiness for a not obscene number of calories. Other fast food restaurants naturally have similar items on the menu, but the salads and wraps and such I've tried at places not named Wendy's taste awful or don't fill me up particularly well. 

Panda Express - Panda Express and the many related chains get crazy points for using fresh vegetables. Well, fresher than any other fast food-type place. Many of their entrees are less than 300 calories per serving, and the mixed vegetable side option is low cal AND fairly low sodium. For the love of all that is holy, avoid the Beijing Beef though. Beijing Beef tastes wonderful, but has nearly twice as many calories as the next highest calorie entree.

Subway - Subway can be as healthy or unhealthy as you want it to be. Personally, I usually get a basic turkey or chicken sub loaded with most of the available vegetables. A loaded footlong will usually cover my food needs for both lunch and dinner.

Staple of staples

A minor addendum to the previous entry

Since I mentioned my love of other flavors in the Talenti and Ciao Bella lines, I figured I'd mention a few of the standouts among the many I've tried.

Talenti Roman Raspberry Sorbet: Tastes like real raspberry and not the usual fake artificial raspberry flavoring. Goes down smooth, crisp, and clean.

Talenti Double Dark Chocolate Gelato: I'm a chocoholic, and this gelato is everything I want in a straight-up chocolate-flavored frozen treat. Rich as hell, creamy as can be, and tastes like a fist of pure dark chocolate pounding on your tongue. The pieces of semisweet chocolate don't hurt either.

Ciao Bella Key Lime Graham Gelato: Key lime pie stuffed into a one pint ice cream container. It's a hair light for a gelato, and maybe even for ice cream as well, but not so much that it ruins my enjoyment of the fantastic flavor. The graham cracker has been rendered into powder, so the bits aren't noticeable beyond the flavor they bring into the equation. No gross texture anomalies here.

Ciao Bella Blood Orange Sorbet: A perfect balance of sweet and tart. I could eat this one all day, every day.

If you only ever try one thing I recommend, make it this.

Two great tastes, one grievous error

I'm going to talk about two coconut-flavored frozen treats: one is a gelato and one is a sorbet, but both have the same critical flaw. A flaw I now find to be common in foods utilizing coconut as an ingredient rather than a topping.

Talenti Caribbean Coconut Gelato and Ciao Bella Coconut Sorbet both taste like coconut, so your feelings on that score should match your personal feelings regarding coconut in general. I love coconut, so clearly the flavor isn't the flaw I speak of. The problem is actually one of texture. Texture is king for me. Good texture overcomes questionable flavor, but unpleasent texture sinks even the most delicious of foods.

Would you eat ice cream after it fell in the sand? Because that's exactly what both  products feel like in the mouth. The coconut in both cases has been broken up into particles just big enough to make everything seem gritty. It is bizarre and unsettling. Maybe I'm a tad oversensitive when it comes to certain textures, but I cannot fathom how either product made it to market in this form. I will say I am a fan of both Talenti and Ciao Bella in general and consider many of their other flavors to be worth trying, but the coconut should be given the widest berth.

If you want coconut flavor in a frozen dessert without the texture problem, the Purely Decadent brand of dairy free ice creams from Turtle Mountain may be more your speed. They produce five flavors using coconut milk as the dairy replacement, and the two I've tried are delicious. The coconut milk ice cream does feel a hair thin/less creamy compared to the normal stuff, but I'll take that over grit any day.

Misadventures in Clearance Booze

I was not starved for choice from the clearance endcap this time around. I apologize in advance for the picture quality; the internet barely seems to know this stuff exists, so I had to take my own picture.

I've never seen or heard of cactus-flavored vodka before, so I had zero idea of what to expect from Sahuaro. The smell reminds me of melon, and I swear I catch a whiff of something vaguely pear-like as well. The alcohol hits the nostrils pretty hard, implying it is not the smoothest of vodkas.

Sahuaro tastes like melon, but the flavor seems subdued. It reminds me of hitting the rind while eating an actual melon; you still get some of the flavor, but without the sweetness of the sugar in the melon flesh proper. I approve of that aspect, actually. Feels crisp and refreshing. The alcohol hits the tongue and throat hard though. I've had plenty of harsher vodkas, but Sahuaro will never win any awards for smoothness. I tried chilling it to see if that dulled the alcoholic hit, but chilling somehow made it more harsh. I didn't think that was possible.

Mixing is where Sahuaro shines. It works exceptionally well with most substances containing any form of citrus. Mountain Dew Distortion (which I have gushed about before) works best out of the mixers I had access too at the time.

I could see myself buying Sahuaro occasionally, if I ever find it again. Not great, but far from awful. Hits the spot when I want something melon-flavored without the over-the-top sugar of a liqueur.

Great innovations in food

Frozen fruits and vegetables - Cheap, useful, and you don't have to worry about them going bad on you. That last one is especially important for a single individual such as myself. They can even taste better than fresh, since the fruits and vegetables are frozen right at their peak. In some cases, the freezing process does change the texture in unpleasant ways; I've had frozen bell peppers become a sad pile of multi-colored mush once thawed. You just have to try different brands until you hit one that gets it right. The big boys have it down at this point though, and even most store brands manage to get it right.

George Foreman Grill - Whether the design originated with the Foreman or was merely popularized by it, I can't imagine life without one anymore. Anything I'd want to do with an actual grill, I can pull off with the Foreman, and, much like a good skillet or griddle, the food made with this device only gets better as the grilling plates become seasoned by use.

Slow cooker/crockpot - With 10-15 of prep before work, I can have tasty food ready to eat by the time I get home. And once I came into possession of a decent crockpot cookbook, the potential versatility of the slow cooker surprised me. A lot more can be made with one of these babies than most people realize. My eating habits would probably be even worse than they currently are if not for my slow cooker.

Upside down condiment bottles - Jim Gaffigan was right; it really is embarrassing how long it took humanity to create the upside down bottle. I appreciate no longer needing to smack the bottom of a bottle for half an hour to get a little bit of mustard out. Or too damn much when the process inevitably goes wrong.

Everyday breakfast

Ingredients:
Sausage, any kind (amount roughly equal to 1/2 a frank or brat)
1/2 can diced tomato
Cheese, any kind (1/4 cup shredded, 1-inch cube block, or approximately 1.5 pieces pre-sliced)
2 eggs

Tools:
1 skillet
1 spatula

Time:
10-15 minutes

Dice the sausage and transfer it to the skillet. Set the stove for medium to medium-high. Once you hear the sizzling start, stir the sausage periodically. Open the can of diced tomato and pour off any excess liquid. When the sausage starts changing color, add half the can and save the rest for next time. Again, stir periodically. Once the tomato chunks warm up, crack the eggs directly into the skillet. Break the yolks and start stirring the mix continuously. If you are so inclined, add salt and pepper at this point. After all of the egg firms up, cut the stove off and place the cheese on top. Wait for most of the cheese to melt, then transfer the final product to a plate, let cool, and eat.

Unlike an omelet or scrambled eggs, the eggs here end up in firm, dense chunks. Which is fine by me, because I do not like light and fluffy eggs. I didn't specify particular kinds of sausage or cheese, because nearly anything you like will probably work, and it's kind of fun to experiment with different combinations. You could also add any additional items you'd like; I just prefer to keep it simple most of the time.

Turkey kielbasa + sliced pepper jack

Pepperoni + shredded mozzarella

Some combination suggestions: any kind of chicken sausage + pepper jack, pepperoni + mozzarella, and kielbasa + cheddar. A caveat: I recommend against using andouille sausage, unless you have access to something better than what you typically find in grocery stores. That andouille tends to be so spicy it overwhelms the flavor of every other ingredient. The spice even overwhelms the flavor of the sausage itself in some cases.

Depending on the sausage used, the dish should typically work out to be somewhere between 450 and 580 calories. This recipe is quick and easy, even when one happens to be half asleep, sick, or hungover. And the results are delicious.

I feel the urge.

The urge to splurge.

Goose to my Maverick.

I've attempted to lose weight several times in the past, and I've bounced between 220 and 260 pounds more times than I care to count. Much credit for my success this time around (205 pounds, still dropping, and almost effortlessly keeping to plan over a year later) probably goes to controlled indulgence. Lots of controlled indulgence. By making, say, a few spoonfuls of ice cream a frequent part of my diet, I'm less apt to eat an entire pint or even half-gallon given the chance. And ice cream no longer even tempts me to commit such fatrocities the way it once did.

Before, I tried to be so disciplined all the time, but I'd hit one of those inevitable little walls, get frustrated and discouraged, and turn to food of the junk variety for comfort. Soon I'd be a fat tub of goo again (still not exactly svelte, but one day) and have to start all over. Going nuts at a buffet or fast food joint when you're feeling down not only undoes the work of several previous days right away; it can make resisting a fall to temptation much harder in the immediate future. The whole concept of comfort food/restaurants flew out the window for me when I made them a common occurrence. They lost the 'comfort' aspect once I ceased approaching them as something to be resisted. Plus the change in attitude helped me to become smarter about my choices when getting freaky with the fat. As smart as you can be about such things, but that's another entry.

I just overcame a significant wall not a week ago. My weight refused to budge for months, but for once I did not feel compelled to run back to junk food's fatty embrace and eat my way out. I won't claim I never felt the discrete pull drawing me down that path, but a fast food run once a week reduced it to easily ignorable levels. Two days ago, watching the scale readout start edging downward again felt oddly liberating.

Dewmocracy is the worst form of government

AKA I don’t understand why Distortion is losing spectacularly. Unlike a lot of lime sodas, Distortion actually tastes like lime. Not artificial lime flavoring; real lime. And key lime at that. The best kind of lime excellently rendered in soda, and it gets voted into a distant third place.

It'd be nice if that middle one was at least in the race.

The other two flavors aren’t bad by any means, but they seem so thoroughly unremarkable. Typhoon? Indistinguishable from every other fruit punch-flavored soda on the market. White Out? Overly sweetened Fresca.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much, since my preferred flavor won last time around. Although last time I could actually see the appeal of the other flavors and wouldn’t have minded one bit if either of them had won instead of Voltage. The voting trends this time around leave me more than a little baffled. Not unlike my reaction to 2004, albeit without the dire consequences. I’ll be stocking up on Dewlicious Distortion while I can before Dewcision 2010 ends. Let this Dewtastrophe be on your own heads.

And maybe I should stop with the Dew-based wordplay. Dewpartee? No wait, that's terrible; I should definitely stop now.

Misadventures in Clearance Booze

I like trying new things, even when it seems like a bad idea. And I've developed an unfortunate fascination with the clearance end-cap at one of the nearby liquor stores. Once in a great while, I discover something good on that end-cap. This was not one of those times.

You're not imagining it; Tabasco Spicy Tequila is real. And disturbing. The smell reminds me of gasoline, and the taste more or less matches the aroma. When the fuel flavor fades, you're left with a feeling of heat on the tongue. Along with a new feeling of shame in the mind, because you were foolish enough to try Tabasco branded tequila.

Now I'm the kind of person who prefers to not throw away that which cost me money, no matter how awful. With that in mind, I tried it in several mixed drinks. Most mixers fail miserably when it comes to making this tequila palatable. Spicy Bloody Mary mix makes it drinkable, however. The double hit of heat masks the hideously cheap-tasting tequila, but the resulting Bloody Maria basically tastes like spicy tomato juice and nothing more.

In short, this is a bad product, and Tabasco should feel bad for creating it.