Eggo-licious.

This was meant to be a longer post plus recipe on the merits (and pitfalls) of the Egg Salad Sandwich. I was going to get all fast and furious with the egg jokes too. But I’m still gurgling around in the bloggity-mosh pit on Cheaplander trying to implement things and track down various blogbugs. They bite, ouch.

So I’ll leave all the eggxtras for another day. Oh, before I go: I did have one tip for cooking hard boiled eggs. I’ve forgotten if I already posted this. Actually, this idea is originally from ex-jailbird Martha Stewart.

To get really nice, fluffy, but moist yolks for hard boiled eggs, place your eggs in a medium pot and cover with cold water. Crank up the heat - but don’t walk away. Because if you’re like me, you’ll forget the eggs are on the stove. When the water just begins to boil (but before it’s all going crazy-bubbling-with-the-cheezwiz), turn off the heat and put the lid on the pot securely. It needs to be pretty well sealed.

Then, just leave it for 12-15 minutes. I think everyone’s preference for yolk tenderness is different, so you may need to adjust the time. The carryover heat cooks the yolk nicely. We’ve been using this method pretty exclusively for years now.

(Oh, I’ve listed this post in the 3 dollars or less category, even though there’s no real recipe. But yeah, it definitely comes in under 3 bucks. Probably could make a half dozen egg salad sandwiches for that.)

One last thing - if you have a good egg salad recipe or any eggstra special ideas, please leave a comment. By the way, I like my egg salad with chopped ham in it - you might have been wondering if those pink things were red onions. Nope, it’s ham. I also chop the onion (green or white) eggstremely fine - I don’t like biting into chunkety chunks. But to each his own I guess…

Hello crazies. Since everyone’s gone back to skool[sic, not out sick], I guess I should get back into the normal Cheap Eats swing of things. We’ll start by going the usual route - Frozen Dinners.

Glurgh, my artery just whimpered again.

I got the chance to try out a whole lot of these Claim Jumper Frozen Dinners. Whew - first off, if you didn’t know about the Claim Jumper restaurant chain then you probably have no idea why they’re called that. The dinners are similar to the Marie Callender’s frozen dinners, where they’re inspired by the restaurant.

I used to visit the Claim Jumper near the Puente Hills Mall in Southern California occasionally. What I remember is enormous “cowboy” sized portions, and lots and lots of butter, cream sauce and salt. Like Appleby’s - well, not THAT bad. I just remember they had this fried zucchini appetizer thing that came out and it was as big as baseball bat. Or a canoe. I think I got the lasagna entree. It was as big as the dang LADWP building.

Mutant zucchini’s aside - I was a little hesitant about eating these. The first one I’ve tried, the Chicken Marsala, lived up to the restaurant in question. Gigantic buttery and salty flavors. I wish I hadn’t started with this one because it was by far the worst of the five different varieties.

First off - I just could NOT get past the saltiness. I admit I like things less salty than most, but for food reviews I, er, take saltiness with a grain of salt. It’s like going into combat. I mentally prepare my tongue. Or something like that.

I couldn’t figure out how the % Daily Value could only be 53%, which is already quite gi-normous. Then I realized - this 14 ounce meal is meant for TWO people. Yes, right - you are going to SHARE a frozen meal with someone. Sneaky.

But, because I like to play fair - I’ll try and report on the meal as if the salt content wasn’t overpowering.

The full meal description is “Roasted white meat chicken in a Marsala Sauce over Rigatoni with Baby Bella Mushrooms.” I probably shouldn’t have tried making this particular meal in the microwave. I have had very poor luck with microwaving frozen meals that have any sort of sauce in it, especially those that say to “open and stir” halfway through the cooking time.

It is very difficult to stir a block of chicken and noodle ice. Try it sometime.

Anyhow, I sort of broke it apart and then continued the cooking. I got the result above. The meal actually had a very good smell, although I thought it was very “winey”. The sauce itself was the consistency of salisbury steak gravy but was actually delicious. It was extra buttery and creamy, much to the shagrin of the aforementioned artery.

Continue reading “Claim Jumper Chicken Marsala” …

No matter what dollar store I walk into, I always seem to walk out with some sort of chili. These things just happen. I’ve come to accept it rather than fight it.

It doesn’t matter which hockey team is winning, who’s running for president or what I ate last night. These cans of chili inevitably find their way into my hands.

And onto my plate for review. I’m no stranger to chili from a can. Previously, we’ve reviewed Hormel Chili w/ Beans. I’m somewhat surprised that’s the only real product review yet, not counting the posts about free Weinerschnitzel.

Anyhow, I’m going to run this review a little different. One thing that happens when you do a lot of reviewing (at least for me) is that you end up with a ton of different products that you’ve eaten but haven’t reviewed. If I was to review every single thing that came across my plate, I’d be doing 5 reviews a week non-stop. That’s too crazy.

So, what I often do is take notes. You’re going to laugh - just imagine me sitting with a bowl of chili, bread in one hand, pen in the other, and writing down my deepest darkest feelings about this lumpy, pseudo meat-bean product so they won’t be forgotten.

But the thing is - I WILL forget if I don’t write them down. For instance, I ate this Brooks Thick Chili with Beans almost a month ago. Without notes, I’d completely forget how it tasted. You can’t seriously expect me to eat several cans of this stuff in a month, right? Hm… I guess it would depend how cheap it was.

Anyhow, I’m just going to type in the exact notes as I scribbled them down furiously. You may or may not find this extremely boring, sorry if the former:

Brooks Chili

Overall: Surprisingly low salt(although 44% daily val sodium!), color nice red as chili shoudl be, a tiny bit gummy from the beans but OK.

Spice not too strong, I could have it stronger but suppose it’s better so can taylor [sic] it.

Beans: pinto soft cooked, nice, a little bland if you just eat it plain, pasty to some perhaps.

Ground beef: better than some, but nothing to write home about pretty much pureed, instead of large chunks - reminds me of J in the Balpha tacos.

Heat - barely there at the back of mouth. Could use Tabasco.

Continue reading “Brooks Chili W/ Beans” …

Well, well, well. Time for frozen burritos again.

Truthfully, I’ve been trying to avoid buying these things and just make my own burritos. I try to keep some flour tortillas handy at all times. Cans of refried beans are usually in the pantry, and there’s always some ground beef in the fridge. Then it’s just roll up whatever produce is handy into the mix - lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, cilantro, etc.

But I have to admit there’s still times when you might want a faster snack. I picked up this Las Campanas Red Hot Burrito the other day at the market. It’s actually not a frozen burrito, it’s one of those that are sitting in the prepared food section next to the meats.

However, the shelf life seems to be rather long for a prepared burrito - it was nearly two months! Must be all the yummy preservatives in it…

This is actually a much longer burrito than the usual frozen variety. In fact, because it wasn’t frozen, I nearly broke one in half by picking it up by the end (like a lightsaber, of course). It measures about 11 inches and weighs in at 10 ounces.

Interestingly, the serving size portion is 1/2 burrito. Who eats only half a frozen burrito? I have to admit that this was at least twice the size of the normal 33 cent frozen ones. But in that case, it’s not really a nuke ‘n run type of snack you eat in the car then. It’s a two-hander you have to sit down with. So in the back of my mind I was thinking, why wouldn’t I just make this if I’m going to eat it at home anyway?

Actually, maybe the other reason they suggest 1/2 burrito per person is that it lets them halve the sodium and saturated fat in the nutrition facts on the back. Eating the ENTIRE burrito will give you 1080mg sodium (46% DV) and 9g (50% DV) saturated fat. But then, I’m not hear to talk nutrition I guess.

Continue reading “Las Campanas Burrito” …

I have to say that I purchased this can of Chicken Noodle Soup entirely for the title that the review would produce. This product is called “Thank You Chicken Noodle Soup”. I kid you not. The brand is called “Thank You”, though I believe the megacompany behind it is actually Bird’s Eye Foods.

I also got it because I thought I could somehow work a cynical comment to the effect of: “Thank You Chicken Soup? No, thank you.” Man, that’s low hanging fruit - a Cheap Eats reviewer’s work is just too easy. Little did I know how emphatically I would be saying “No Thank You” to this soup!

Even though I knew that this would probably rank on the “lower end scale” of chicken noodle soups, I wasn’t prepared for how cloudy and glutinous the actual soup was. Well, I usually add water to these non-condensed soups anyhow, but I decided to try it without water for the review.

In my opinion, it was absolutely horrible. The broth itself had a strange, dogfood-esque and metallic (no doubt from the can), off-putting yet bland flavor - if that’s even possible. I had to take several slugs of vodka afterwards to remove the taste which lingered around like a bad second date that has no chance of even stealing first base… OK, I’m kidding about the vodka. But I did feel like I had to use some mouthwash afterwards.

The cloudy broth is remarkably similar to the corn-starch thickened soup they serve for “free” at the innumerable Hong Kong style cafes near our house. Except this tasted much, much worse. I don’t think I’ve had soup this bad in awhile.

The noodles are thin rectangles that are sort of like Campbell’s but extra soft. No bite at all to them. The chicken texture was ok, but the taste was really off. It had an extremely bad “iron” taste - I think it’s the same thing with it being from the aluminum can. I actually found myself spitting out the chicken for the first time. The carrots and celery were very soft - great for your toothless Cheap Eater uncle I guess. Not that this isn’t usually what you get in canned soup.

The whole ensemble was very, very bad. I’m not saying that Progresso or Campbell’s soup is light years better, but… wait, yes they ARE light years better if you’re going to pay a similar amount. I mean, they occasionally have these brands at Big Lots for a dollar too. If I’m going to fork over a dollar for canned soup, please let it NOT be the Thank You brand in the future. This is soup chemistry gone horribly bad. I actually couldn’t finish more than a few spoons, and that’s saying a LOT seeing what I’ve scarfed down before. Absolutely sickening - NO thank you. Experimental Jet Set, Trash and NO STAR.

Price:$1.00
Found At:Big Lots
Cheap Eats Score: 2/10

Heading into the long weekend, I’m going to feed your need for Gross Eats on Cheap Eats. I sincerely hope this doesn’t spoil your appetites for the upcoming BBQ I know you’ll be pigging out at. If you have an aversion to closeups of seafood, please turn away now.

I have to admit I was in a bit of an Andrew Zimmern mood as I waltzed down the aisles at Big Lots the other day. I’d avoided Ocean Prince Smoked Oysters even though I’ve seen them as cheap as 75 cents on occasion. These were marked up to a buck fifteen, but I figured it was high time I faced them down like a man. (Or woman, for those of you who keep thinking I’m a girl.)

Now, I’ve had oysters from cans before and they never look very pretty. In fact, they look downright nasty or even scary. But they’ve tasted pretty good and I usually fry ‘em up anyhow so they don’t look as bad. But I’ve never had smoked oysters before and I’ve always wondered how they differed in taste.

I took the liberty of cutting off the post here, so if you don’t wish to look at gross oyster pictures you can go ahead start the July 4 weekend. But for those with stomachs of steel, read on…

Continue reading “Smoked Oysters” …

Trips to Big Lots inevitably end badly for your friendly neighborhood Cheap Eats Editor. I usually tend to come home with tons of tins - little fishies packed in tomato sauce, strangely potted meat and smoked oysters galore. But I also cave in to other snackies that are a little “healthier” like this 4 pack of Pop Weaver Popcorn.

I’d never heard of Pop Weaver Popcorn before, even though according to their website they are “a leading national brand of microwave popcorn in the United States and is distributed to more than 90 countries worldwide.” The box actually says “more people around the world eat more Pop Weaver popcorn than any other kind.”

I guess maybe it’s more popular in other countries than the U.S. Either that, or in the microwave popcorn scheme of things, I’ve been living in a cave in Antarctica for several years. Which also isn’t too far of a stretch.

I got the standard butter version, but they have other “flavors” like Extra Butter, Light Butter, Kettle Corn and Natural. No cheese or caramel flavors. There’s 4 standard size packs in one box, so it comes out to about a quarter each. In general, I like popcorn and think it’s a great snack for Cheap Eaters - but I’m constantly seduced by the flashier and unhealthier Doritos and Cheetos products of the world. So maybe there’s something to it then when Pop Weaver says that the reason their microwave popcorn can be so cheap is that they spend a whole lot less on advertising, packaging and even ink on the bags.

The box looks rather plain - their logo is the smallest thing on the box. The largest thing on it is the words “4 Bags”. A big sticker also proclaims “NO DIACETYL FLAVORINGS” which I suppose is a good thing? I haven’t been keeping up with that stuff, but I’m guessing Diacetyl is something bad. I was wondering if it’s the same concern as with the Teflon in non-stick cookware, or something different.

Incidentally, why is it that every box of microwave popcorn seems to be associated with a friendly old geezer with glasses?

Sure, I know you can buy your own corn kernels and pop them yourself on the stove for cheaper. But I don’t know, I just like popping it in a bag in the microwave once in awhile. My brain cells and neurons, already taxed to their limit by trying to decide whether or not $2 is a good price for Low Salt Spam, are loathe to take on yet more decisions. (She can’t take much more captain!)

As for the popcorn itself, I have to say at a quarter for a bag it’s very good. I followed the directions and went by the PPS metric (number of Pops Per Second) instead of a flat cooking time. I think microwave popcorn must have one of the greatest ranges of cooking times I’ve ever seen for food. It’s 2-5 minutes. That’s a huge difference, so it’s definitely best to listen for popping. My corn timed out at about 3.5 minutes.

The popped kernels weren’t extraordinarily large, but they were about average sized for cheap microwave popcorn. They definitely weren’t the fluffy gourmet kind, or the kettle corn sized kernels. Still, they tasted pretty good. The amount of salt and “butter flavoring” was a little on the light side, which was fine by me. You can always slather on more butter later.

I was surprised that most of the kernels actually popped. There were only about 4-5 unpopped which is something I constantly have problems with in microwave popcorn. (I know some people actually like the unpopped kernels but I have a hard time eating them.) So on that front, Pop Weaver did really well.

Pricewise they were excellent - I’m not complaining at a quarter for one package. Tastewise, they were satisfactory. But chances are if you eat this, you’re probably not going to care as you sit spellbound munching away in front of the TV while watching re-runs of Quantum Leap. Oh, boy!

Price:$1 for 4 Pack Box
Found At:Big Lots
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10