Hobo meals are worthwhile!

Whatever name you call this meal deal; be it Hobo or Campfire, this recipe has a lot going for it! It’s tasty, easy to prepare, nutritious and cost effective! As an added bonus, cleanup is a snap! Wow!

Ingredients (per packet):

1 hamburger patty

1 strip of bacon

1 med potato cut up

2 carrots cut up

1 onion, quartered

1 wedge of cabbage

Salt and pepper
Heavy aluminum foil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using heavy foil, make a square about 12” by 16” in size (just eyeball this). Form a small patty out of the hamburger and wrap it with a strip of bacon. Cut up the veggies and arrange them along with the meat in the center of the foil. Use salt and pepper to taste. Carefully bring up the sides of the foil and make an airtight seal leaving some airspace on top. (Note: The steam generated during the cooking process helps to cook this meal). Place the meal into a shallow oven safe casserole dish (to help prevent leaks) on a center rack in the oven.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes, carefully remove the meal(s) and allow it or them to cool for at least ten minutes before opening. Open the top to vent and watch out for any steam! Place the packet on a plate and dig in!

Nutrition

Assuming that you take care to keep that ground beef patty down to a reasonable size and that you 86th the bacon, this meal turns out to be quite nutritious! (Hey! Throw out both meats entirely and I'm sure Mrs. Obama would embrace you in a fast and furious fashion….:)

A word about cost…

At the time of this post, our Nation is still basking in the warmth that was President Obama’s re-election! A man who was once is said to have said that ‘there’s no country I can’t bankrupt given enough terms in office.’ I have this to say about cost...

To wit, this meal contains only one truly ‘expensive’ item and that would be the ground beef. No problemo! You can save money by either cutting back on the size of the patty or by substituting whatever it is you can track, kill and grind up!

At right is a breakout of the per serving cost of this meal as of the end of 2012. So, for about two bucks per serving you can still enjoy a decent dinner at home!

Also, please note that all of the veggies can be grown right in your own backyard for very little cost and so can really help out the family budget for those of us living in a post financial cliff world!

Random Thoughts on the Eve of the End of the World as we know it!

It was the video and I have da pruf!

While State Department officials are getting the axe and Hillary (bless her soul), is recovering from a concussion, I have definitive proof that the Libya mess was caused solely by that darn old film ‘Innocence of the Muslims. You see fellow readers, the producer named Mark Basseley Youssef, was just now sentenced to a year in prison! Let them there Democrats now rejoice as the 'onus badonus' has been lifted off those pure shoulders of our so very President. And take note, you bad old Republicans, is so not a liar!

While he may not be fiddling, he definately is watching us burn!

With mere days left before the country goes over a cliff that will surely result in mass riots and the loss of our country in bankruptcy, our illustrious Leader Barrack Insane Obama is very busy doing anything and everything but addressing the spending problems in Washington. God bless this man – at least he is consistent! When recently asked about the budget, he was heard to say ‘what budget?’

To the scammers of Newtown…

May you scammers rot in hell or at the very least be caught and held up to the bright lights of media coverage! I’d really like for everyone to see what a true lowlife is all about…

BBQ Meatloaf

I happened across a menu item called BBQ Meatloaf that was created originally by Paula Deen, a noted restaurateur and famous chef, and thought I’d give it a try. The ingredient list was very doable and I had most everything on hand.

Ingredients:

1 ½ pounds of ground beef

1 cup fresh bread crumbs

1 onion, diced

1 egg, lightly beaten

½ bell pepper (added by me)

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. pepper

16 ounces of tomato sauce

3 tbsp. vinegar

3 tbsp. brown sugar

2 tbsp. Dijon mustard

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

¼ cup water if needed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix the beef with the breadcrumbs, onion, bell pepper, salt, pepper and about half the tomato sauce. Form this into a loaf and place it in a shallow pan. Stir together the remaining tomato sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, mustard and Worcestershire sauce and pour this over the meatloaf. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes with the pan juices.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

I did manage to follow this recipe pretty closely with the exception of that last part concerning the remaining tomato sauce. Rather than mix all that other stuff into the sauce, I elected to add it directly to the meatloaf. The only things that were poured over the loaf was that remaining sauce and some vinegar.

The end result was a nice looking meatloaf that tasted awesome! I also made a mental note to stop at the store and get a loaf of plain white bread so that I could enjoy one of life’s greatest pleasures….a meatloaf sandwich! Give this recipe a try! It’s easy to make and oh so good to eat!

Critique: Aunt Jemima's scrambled egg entree!

For a couple of bucks you get granular eggs, mushy hash browns and a couple of limp bacon strips! So, what’s not to love?

This 149 gram entrée from the folks at Quaker Oats would not seem that appetizing at first glance. It’s also a nutritionally challenged meal coming in at 310 calories of which 200 of those calories are derived from fat! To add misery to madness, the cholesterol does is 92% of the daily recommended allowance for an average person and there’s enough salt present (36%) to make you crave a glass of water afterwards. And don’t even get me started on the saturated fat content of this little puppy….

So, why do I buy and eat junk food like this? Call me crazy or perhaps just a bit off center, but this stuff does really taste pretty darn gooood!

Maybe it’s the fat content and maybe it all that salt. Whatever the reason, I like to make Aunt Jemima part of my breakfast plans one or twice a month. I scored this a solid 7 on a scale of 10. (The score would have been higher, but hey - this stuff will kill you)!

Critique: Michelina's Sesame Chicken

I would have guessed that any food description with the word sesame in it would be OK. After all, sesame seed plants are one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world! Why, I often eat hamburger with buns that have sesame seeds sprinkled over them (why this is even done is a subject for another post). So, I figured since this meal-deal was also on sale, I’d give it a go.

This Lean Gourmet offering comes in at a meager 260 calories and even the sodium, at 600 milligrams, ain’t all that bad. But…it’s also an Asian dish – something I missed when I pick it up at the store. It’s not that I don’t like all things Asian; let’s just say that I’m more a meat and taters kind of guy. Still, it was on sale and so into the microwave it went.

This brings me to a problem I have with this line of meals from Michelina. Most of these packages instruct one to ‘tear a corner to vent’ which is OK. What’s not OK is that the instructions are on the bottom of the package. So, if there’s more than one operation to perform in the prep cycle (and there is), you have to carefully hold the whole affair up over your head to see what the next step entails. Most times, they want you to open up the package and stir this or that before re-nuking for another minute or more. Problem is, that lid like to curl up and so is really difficult to place back over the contents! I’m forced to place some kind of plastic utensil over the lid to hold it down! Michelina – This was not a well thought out process and you need to come up with something else.

After working through the intricacies of meal preparation, I sat down to eat. Right off, I noticed that the pasta was not al dente, but rather al soggy. Also, there was the issue with actually finding any chicken. I did spy what appeared to be some meat cubes, but they were too small to readily identify ad coming from a bird. Lastly, I found the taste to be mildly objectionable. Asian is just not my cup of tea and even though I ate the whole meal, it’s not some road I plan to travel again in the near future! This one gets a 5 on a scale of 10. Another in my growing list of entrees I plan to serve to guests I don’t particularly like.

The flu is making early inroads this year!

After experiencing a number of years where the onset of influenza was either late or very moderate, this year could be a change for the worst!

As of the latest report by the CDC dated December 1, 2012, the flu is really beginning to ramp up in some states, most notably the southeast. As the graphic of states would indicate, the incidents of ILI or Influenza Like Illness is becoming widespread in states like Texas and Louisiana while Mississippi and Alabama are getting hammered! My home state of Missouri is doing OK, so far with only moderate to low occurrences being reported. Interestingly, neither Taney or Stone Counties have seen a single case so far, but that will more than likely not remain the norm for long.

This season, the main problem bug seems to be H3N2 aka Type A/Brisbane/10/2007 which is the same bug that was prevalent last year. It's thought, therefore, the vaccine currently being distributed should be very effective if applied early in the season (which means right now).

Critique: Michelina’s Salisbury steak!

This small, yet so very interesting, offering by Michelina gives a man just what he wants – meat and taters boy! It’s just too bad that this entrée is good to go for only us smaller dudes. At a bare 330 calories, there just ain’t enough ‘beef n spuds’ to satisfy most he-man types.

Having said that, I felt that this frozen meal deal might still be a good candidate for anyone looking to lose a few pounds (like me). And anywho, it was cheap! (I bought it at a local grocery principally because it was on sale for just $1.25). These days, while basking in that post coital Obama election glow, I find myself forced to limit my dining selections to the stuff that’s on sale. Long gone are those days where I’d stop over by the old meat isle and just grab myself a cheap porterhouse steak! Hey! Obama baby, I could use some o that free money right about now…

Yes, I'm afraid its become infected...

Quickly then, onwards to the bottom line….

After nuking in the microwave as per the directions and looking at the result (see picture), I really had no great expectations. (After all, by the time I’d gotten to this meal, I’d had a history of disappointing meals strewn out behind me in the form of previous posts. I was also reminded that I needed to get after a clogged up cesspool out back). So, it was with a heavy heart and a diminishing appetite that I took my warm meal to the dining room table.

Egad! This stuff wasn’t all that bad! I have to give the Michelina folks some credit where credits due. The steak tasted a lot like meatloaf and the mashed potatoes, well, they tasted like they were supposed to. All in all, a great little meal for the money. I’d give this one a solid 7 on a scale of 10!