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Foodapalooza - the longest food draft of all time - The beef finally arrives in rounds 51 & 52 (1 Viewer)

Edit: accidentally made a 14 round pick a day too early

 
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13. French Onion soup

I'm not a big soup guy.  Hardly ever get it when I eat out because it ends up being too much food in addition to an entree even for my fat ###.  I can't recall the best I've ever had, but I used to occasionally go to Bennigan's for lunch and they had a consistently good one, with that melted cheese overlapping the side the bowl.  So good.


I was torn between this and crab bisque, but went with the latter because I couldn't decide which restaurant's French onion soup to select.

 
GEEZUS.

ok - I'm going to have to dig deeper ...the soups I initially had high on my list ...ruthlessly ripped from my grasp

seafood bisque - gone

hot and sour soup - gone

oyster stew - gone

pho - gone

french onion soup - gone

 
RD 13:  SOUP - TURTLE SOUP AT COMMANDER'S PALACE, NEW ORLEANS

I've spent a lot of vendor dollars at this place. This place is always a top choice if you're on someone else's dime. No suit jacket? NP ...they'll give you one so you don't sully their place.

and always love the sherry poured over by the waiter at your table.

The turtle soup here is legendary.

 
RD 13:  SOUP - TURTLE SOUP AT COMMANDER'S PALACE, NEW ORLEANS

I've spent a lot of vendor dollars at this place. This place is always a top choice if you're on someone else's dime. No suit jacket? NP ...they'll give you one so you don't sully their place.

and always love the sherry poured over by the waiter at your table.

The turtle soup here is legendary.


Yes!!!  Whenever I've visited New Orleans, we've gone here at lunch for the turtle soup (and other food) and the 25-cent martinis.  I wonder if they still do that.  

 
I accept the “peppers as vegetable for culinary purposes” ruling.  So…
 

Round 11 Vegetable Raw - Red Bell Pepper

The sweet crispness of a raw red bell pepper is one of my favorite garnishes.  I put them in green salads the way normal humans add tomatoes.  Slice ‘em real thin for use as a sandwich topping.  And when I make fajitas at the house, I’ll cook the onions until they are caramelized and throw a rainbow array of bell peppers on the grill for others, but I leave some raw red ones behind for myself.  

 
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Round 12 Kitchen Gadget - Stand Mixer

The first kitchen gadget I remember using is a handheld mixer to make chocolate chip cookie dough.  My mom didn’t like store-bought cookies but made sometimes made homemade ones on weekends.  Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies are the first thing I remember learning how to cook or bake. She’d put the mixing bowl in the kitchen sink and put a step stool in front of it so I could be tall enough to hold the mixer and see the action inside the mixing bowl.  

Because of that connection and enjoying the process (and having a sweet Breville hand mixer with rubber-ended beaters and a stopwatch) I was late on adding a stand mixer, even after seeing Alton Brown’s mixer on Good Eats customized with a flame paint job suitable for a late 70s Trans Am.  

But now, I love having the stand mixer to do the work for me.  It’s not a rejection of the past, but an acknowledgment of progress, there is a better way.  

 
Round 13 Beer - Sam Adams Porch Rocker

I’m not much of a beer connoisseur.  My introduction to beer was its purpose as a cheap, relatively inefficient route to intoxication.  I do like some citrusy beers, and this seasonal offering from Sam Adams is one of the few I will seek out to buy and sip on.

I know nothing about microbrews or that stuff.  I think it’s fun hearing people talk about them and different ones they’ve tried in different cities and regions - if food is a method of learning geography and culture, so are beverages. 

 
13.  A 24 oz. PBR can while waiting for the bands to start

I know it's déclassé but bottles and cans are the way to go when I'm at a show.  Tap beers and cocktails are served in plastic cups that slosh around in a crowd.  It's easier to shove  a can or bottle in my jacket pocket while I'm not drinking it to keep my hands free.  I'll buy a 24 oz. can when we first go in and nurse it for most of the evening.  Even when the beer is warm and backwashy before the encores, it's still wet.

Pabst Blue Ribbon was the beer of my childhood in Milwaukee.  It's what my uncles drank and that's good enough for me.

 
I've never seen raw peanuts served or sold anywhere except nuts dot com( and even they give instructions for boiling them). 

What do you do with them?  What do they taste like compared to roasted peanuts?
I’ve never handled them or tasted them. Since they were supposedly popular in the past (circus, ballgames, etc) I assume they’d be about the same as roasted, except less “toasty”? 

 
I've never seen raw peanuts served or sold anywhere except nuts dot com( and even they give instructions for boiling them). 

What do you do with them?  What do they taste like compared to roasted peanuts?
Are you kidding?  I can't tell.

We used to eat them shell and all.

 
Are you kidding?  I can't tell.

We used to eat them shell and all.
Based on his confusion, I couldn't tell either.

I assumed he meant that peanuts (in shells) were typically roasted ("cooked")? Assuming he is indeed confused, I've had countless amounts of "raw" peanuts.

 
Based on his confusion, I couldn't tell either.

I assumed he meant that peanuts (in shells) were typically roasted ("cooked")? Assuming he is indeed confused, I've had countless amounts of "raw" peanuts.


Do they taste more like a raw bean than a roasted peanut?

 
9th Round - Tripleta (sandwich)

Puerto Rican food is kinda forgotten amongst the rest of the Caribbean, it seems, but we are lucky to have a very strong Puerto Rican presence locally.  My old neighborhood was in the heart of the district, a rare place in Buffalo where most of the street signs, stores, etc., are all in Spanish instead of English.  Many of the hole in the wall restaurants have come and gone, but one thing that always remains is the tripleta.

The tripleta refers to three meats - usually pernil (a slow-roasted pork that ends up  somewhat similar to pulled pork), ham, and steak or chicken - piled high with some toppings and crunchy potato straws.  Delicious stuff.

 
13.xx Stella Artois, Belgian lager, beverage - beer

Gold in a glass, #####es. I've drunk it all, diluted batpiss to porters you can chew and, while there may be more complex moments one can have with a brew, one can only taste the sun with a Belgian lager, and Stella - and the Persian doctor neighbor who served it me as we celebrated France's '98 World Cup triumph, as well as Iran's victory over USA in group - lit my path to them. Proost!

 
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Round 14:  Chili Con Carne, soup or stew.

I thought for sure I'd sacrificed chili on my roster when I previously chose gumbo.  Well, come on down!  No recipe to share, but I have a link to one highly thought of, if anyone is interested. 

Most times I make chili, I just grab Wick Fowler's 2-alarm because it's simple and good, but when I do make mine, it's all about the chile.  I'll blend several dry chile varieties in my spice mill; I'll rehydrate many varieties of chiles, and then run through a blender, strain, simmer, and touch up with salt, honey, and liquid smoke. I'm not one to go around repeating falsehoods - I add kidney beans too.  Serve with shredded cheddar, fresh chopped white onion, and ungodly amount of saltines.   

Just want to stress that I celebrate as many varieties of chiles when preparing - New Mexico, guajillos, arbol, chili petins, ancho, mulatos, serrano, and jalapeno. Full disclosure:  sometimes I knock it out of teh park with my chile blends, but sometimes they are meh.  Wish I could come up with an ideal blend. I've recently discovered manzano peppers (they're incredible) and I dried out several in my oven, which I will include next time I roll my own.

 
Round 14:  Chili Con Carne, soup or stew.

I thought for sure I'd sacrificed chili on my roster when I previously chose gumbo.  Well, come on down!  No recipe to share, but I have a link to one highly thought of, if anyone is interested. 

Most times I make chili, I just grab Wick Fowler's 2-alarm because it's simple and good, but when I do make mine, it's all about the chile.  I'll blend several dry chile varieties in my spice mill; I'll rehydrate many varieties of chiles, and then run through a blender, strain, simmer, and touch up with salt, honey, and liquid smoke. I'm not one to go around repeating falsehoods - I add kidney beans too.  Serve with shredded cheddar, fresh chopped white onion, and ungodly amount of saltines.   

Just want to stress that I celebrate as many varieties of chiles when preparing - New Mexico, guajillos, arbol, chili petins, ancho, mulatos, serrano, and jalapeno. Full disclosure:  sometimes I knock it out of teh park with my chile blends, but sometimes they are meh.  Wish I could come up with an ideal blend. I've recently discovered manzano peppers (they're incredible) and I dried out several in my oven, which I will include next time I roll my own.
my Halloween Chili - that i originally made for a gf's 10yo, who wished there was an orange & black food to serve @ his holiday party, out of pumpkin, colorless ground turkey, ancho & black beans - still plays a large part in keeping me & me ol' Da regular here in the frozen north. chili's a way of life -

 
i already listed a soup, but for "stew" I like making beef bourguignon. 

One evening, Sylvester Stallone decided to bypass an entrée after having my goulash...order 4 more bowls.

 
For my next soup, I'm back on the nostalgia trip.  Except the nostalgia has never really gone away.  I make this literally all the time.

14.x -- Chicken and Dumplings (Dumpling recipe straight from the Bisquick box)

If I had to pick my absolute favorite dish as a child, this might have been it.  And my Mom made the bog standard version.  Maybe she'd put some carrot and peas in the final stew.  Maybe.  

As an adult, I've tried plenty of other recipes.  One from Emeril.  One from Chef John.  One from Thomas Keller, for Pete's sake.  And in the end, I just like the recipe I grew up eating.

My own concession is that I do poach a whole chicken, remove the meat and then finish my own broth in the Instant Pot when I make this.  So I have a very good, flavorful chicken broth.  But from there, it's more often than not just cook the dumplings (2 cups bisquick to 2/3 cups whole milk spooned into the boiling broth, 10 minutes uncovered, 10 minutes covered with a kitchen towel wrapped around the lid) and add in the meat at the end.  Sometimes I'll add frozen peas and carrots.  If I'm feeling really fancy, I'll do some coins or chunks of carrots before doing the dumplings.  But mostly, anything I add is just added when I make the stock.  

I'm not a slicks guy, though I admit that the Cracker Barrel dish is similarly simple yet tasty.  But I prefer the pillowy dumplings.

 
Round 12 Kitchen Gadget - Stand Mixer

The first kitchen gadget I remember using is a handheld mixer to make chocolate chip cookie dough.  My mom didn’t like store-bought cookies but made sometimes made homemade ones on weekends.  Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies are the first thing I remember learning how to cook or bake. She’d put the mixing bowl in the kitchen sink and put a step stool in front of it so I could be tall enough to hold the mixer and see the action inside the mixing bowl.  

Because of that connection and enjoying the process (and having a sweet Breville hand mixer with rubber-ended beaters and a stopwatch) I was late on adding a stand mixer, even after seeing Alton Brown’s mixer on Good Eats customized with a flame paint job suitable for a late 70s Trans Am.  

But now, I love having the stand mixer to do the work for me.  It’s not a rejection of the past, but an acknowledgment of progress, there is a better way.  
I'm several rounds behind but this was my choice for kitchen gadget.  Would've taken it myself if you hadn't.  So versatile.

 
14.ee - Cioppino  (soup or stew)

Homer pick for the real San Francisco treat.  Mrs. Eephus' family likes to celebrate special events at old school restaurants at Fisherman's Wharf. The food there is kind of safe and boring but the views are terrific and the mid 20th century throwback atmosphere is fun. I'll usually order Cioppino unless there's an interesting catch of the day.  It's a great dish with the fragrant tomato-based broth perfectly complementing the seafood.

 
10th Round - Beef on Weck (sandwich)

I will go the basic route with another hometown favorite.  You could argue it's a variant on a French dip (in fact, Wiki lists each counterpart as the top related "see also" sandwich item), but I would argue it's sufficiently different.

There are many places that serve a delicious beef on weck, local favorites like Schwabl's, Bar Bill, Charlie the Butcher.  But growing up, it's an at-home staple.  Thinly sliced rare roast beef, usually a London broil or something similar, dipped for maybe 20-30 seconds, tops, in hot au jus, piled high on the bun.  Au jus over the top - I usually like mine on the underside of the crown of the roll.  Loaded with enough horseradish to clear your sinuses for a week.  It's not a beef on weck if you're not crying during the meal.  And the weck roll is a must.  None of those kaiser rolls.  A simple, workingman's roll, topped with both salt and caraway seed. 

 
14 - Soup or Stew - Grandma Helen's Beef Stew

I'll keep simple, just like grandma kept it simple. Round steak, potatoes, carrots, and celery. That with some beef broth, water, and salt and pepper is all that was needed. She passed when I was 9, but my dad has kept up the tradition of making this recipe (one of only three things he an cook - this, grandma helen's chow mein, and his own chili recipe) and now I do too (although I do add a bay leaf and a few other seasonings). Nothing warms me up more on a cold day. This is the epitome of comfort food for me. 

 
9th Round - Tripleta (sandwich)

Puerto Rican food is kinda forgotten amongst the rest of the Caribbean, it seems, but we are lucky to have a very strong Puerto Rican presence locally.  My old neighborhood was in the heart of the district, a rare place in Buffalo where most of the street signs, stores, etc., are all in Spanish instead of English.  Many of the hole in the wall restaurants have come and gone, but one thing that always remains is the tripleta.

The tripleta refers to three meats - usually pernil (a slow-roasted pork that ends up  somewhat similar to pulled pork), ham, and steak or chicken - piled high with some toppings and crunchy potato straws.  Delicious stuff.


Oh, hot damn!  My son got me a gift card to the only Puerto Rican food joint in Beaverton and we've been twice, but never had this.  Just looked at their menu and there she be!   I know what I'm getting!

Thanks Tasker :thumbup:

 
Oh, hot damn!  My son got me a gift card to the only Puerto Rican food joint in Beaverton and we've been twice, but never had this.  Just looked at their menu and there she be!   I know what I'm getting!

Thanks Tasker :thumbup:
I will say that photo does kinda look dry as hell, usually the pernil is very juicy.  If they're making their own pernil in house (and I am guessing they are because it's all over the other items on their menu), definitely give that a try.

 
9th Round - Tripleta (sandwich)

Puerto Rican food is kinda forgotten amongst the rest of the Caribbean, it seems, but we are lucky to have a very strong Puerto Rican presence locally.  My old neighborhood was in the heart of the district, a rare place in Buffalo where most of the street signs, stores, etc., are all in Spanish instead of English.  Many of the hole in the wall restaurants have come and gone, but one thing that always remains is the tripleta.

The tripleta refers to three meats - usually pernil (a slow-roasted pork that ends up  somewhat similar to pulled pork), ham, and steak or chicken - piled high with some toppings and crunchy potato straws.  Delicious stuff.
Never had one of these before.  But I’m in. 
The Cubano proves roasted pork and ham can work together on the same sandwich.  And I frequently see the solution to any culinary problem as “add more meat” so make it a tripleta.  Pile it on.

 
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Round 13 - Beverage - Beer - Boneyard RPM IPA

Finally, a category I'm going to call myself an expurt in.  Beer.  Okay, no, I'm not going to tell you about Original Gravity, International Bitterness, or what sort of manure is used to fertilize the hops from Yakima, BUT - I've enjoyed (and over enjoyed) thousands of beers in my life and I know what slaps and what falls flat.

Pound for pound, Boneyard RPM IPA  out of Bend, OR is the top tier, uber elite BEST IPA in the Pacific Northwest.  Especially if you can find it on tap, which, blessedly, is easier to do in bars and restaurants around here these days.  Why?  Because it's fantastic.  It is perfectly balanced, not too hoppy, not too sweet not too anything - it's the Goldilocks of IPA beers.  And at 6.5% you'll feel them without needing assistance to go to the bathroom.  

If you're ever in Oregon and you see this on tap, stop scanning the menu and order.  

 
14.xx Founder's All Day IPA

I'm almost exclusively an IPA drinker, and this is the best of the the "session" IPAs I've tried, by far.  It is not necessarily my favorite beer, and maybe I should have used this pick to highlight some of my locally brewed favorites, but it has been my go-to for a while now.  

Pictures and videos coming later.  

 
14.xx Founder's All Day IPA

I'm almost exclusively an IPA drinker, and this is the best of the the "session" IPAs I've tried, by far.  It is not necessarily my favorite beer, and maybe I should have used this pick to highlight some of my locally brewed favorites, but it has been my go-to for a while now.  

Pictures and videos coming later.  
Well, the price point is perfect too.  I can get a 15 pack of this in Oregon for $15.99, so not only is it a great session IPA, it's easy on the wallet.  I like Bell's Two Hearted a little better as a Michigan session drinking beer, but they don't have that available here.  

 
Well, the price point is perfect too.  I can get a 15 pack of this in Oregon for $15.99, so not only is it a great session IPA, it's easy on the wallet.  I like Bell's Two Hearted a little better as a Michigan session drinking beer, but they don't have that available here.  


It's been a victim of inflation here.  Was 16.99 for a 15 pack forever at Kroger.  Has gone up to 19.99 over the past year. 

Thanks Obama.

 

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