Boy.

I enjoyed that vacation WAY too much. I’ve been having to force myself to get back on the ball. While I decompress from the delicious vacay-afterglow, I’ll have to leave you with a mere Leftovers for Lunch post today.

I actually can’t remember if I posted this before. In all likelihood, I’ve put it up previously. Oh well. I was unloading vacation photos and decided to do a full camera dump. This picture of baked spaghetti was in the mix, so I decided to use it. Baked pasta is a great way to use up leftovers. You can actually do it as the initial meal and bake it fresh, or resurrect spaghetti leftovers from two days ago. Melted cheese makes any leftovers taste better.

And because I have nothing better to talk about, I will now sum up baked pasta in a William Carlos Williams style quote:

so much depends
upon

a leftover
pasta

glazed with orange
cheeses

inside the white
oven

Have a poetic pasta day.

Hi there Cheap Eaters. Just wanted to let you know that I’ll be on break for at least a few weeks. I didn’t feel like rewriting the post about the whole vacation thingy, so you can read more about it on Cheaplander.

OK, I’ll see you all in a bit!
Bryan

I am not a pretty, pretty princess.

This is not the story of my life living with a Jamaican lobster “Under da Sea”. It’s sort of the story of A Man, a Plan, a Can - Disney Princess Spaghettios. But drat, my palindromic powers are lacking. How about “Omelette was I ere I saw Elmo?” Closer, but wrong movie. And food type.

I did not dress up last Halloween as Ariel. Sometimes I wish I did, because I probably would have gotten more candy than when I dressed up as Richard Nixon. Can you just imagine answering the door and being greeted with “Trick or treat, I’m not a crook” while holding out a bag…

I do not have the hots for Robert Pattinson. But that would be an interesting mix. I think a Disney vampire princess cartoon would sell like hotcakes. Or has that been done already…

I don’t have any posters of these Disney princesses on the wall. Parents with young daughters are rightfully quaking in their shoes at the sight of the Holy Trinity of the Disney-fied Apocalypse on this can - Ariel, Belle and Cinderella. ABC, 123, shoot me now please.

And so on.

One of the difficulties when writing product reviews, is that you’d suspect that this can of Spaghettios Shapes would practically write it’s own review. The problem is that it’s TOO easy to make fun of. It’s like shooting cans of Spam in a barrel.

There are too many inside princess jokes I’d like to spew forth, and too many pop culture references that beg to be mashed up with Spaghettios lore. So what happens is that I start to ramble, to sling those fine Dungeons and Dragons asides. I become comfortably incomprehensible. And inevitably, it turns into one of THOSE reviews.

But I promised myself I wouldn’t do that this time. The only way I can find to mute the mouth is to show a bunch of pictures of the product. It takes up room in the post and makes me feel like I’ve written more than I actually have.

Anyhow, there’s not much more to say on the taste of Spaghettios. We’ve reviewed them before, and once you’ve tasted one can, you’ve tasted them all. The only difference is whether they include meatballs, and what shape the extruded noodles are in. Marketing and packaging - that’s all it is.

This first thing I have to say about the packaging is that I think something is wrong with the above sentence. But I can’t figure it out. “Cool shapes shaped pasta in tomato and cheese sauce.” Maybe I’m wrong - after all I just write written reviews about cans of canned food.

There was a surprising diversity of shapes in the can - however, I was disappointed to note that perhaps 50 percent of the shapes were simple “O’s”. Man, if you’re going to go through the trouble of promoting the Disney movies, why not include omit those O shapes? Because (as a future reader will no doubt write in to tell me) then you couldn’t call it Spaghettios any more. And there goes your brand name.

Beyond the shapes, everything else was pretty much what you’d expect. Inhalable noodles in a sweet orange sauce. When I was heating this up in a pot, I was already prepared to be disappointed by the lack of pasta shapes that actually corresponded to the pictures on the can. The shapes that I saw on first glance looked nothing like princesses, castles, carriages or crowns. OK, maybe the crown did look accurate. They looked pretty unrecognizable. I could see why this was on clearance for 90 cents.

I wouldn’t have blamed them if they didn’t include ALL the “Seven Enchanting Princess Shapes.” After all, who’s going to keep track of stuff like that? What kind of idiot would actually sit there carefully pick the different noodle shapes out of boiling spaghetti sauce? What kind of OCD maniac would try and identify each of the shapes, set them aside on a plate and try to take a photo of them in the same configuration as the picture on the can?

Price: $.90 for 15 oz.
Found At: Ralph’s
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10

[Editor’s Note: I actually have a soft spot for Ariel since this was the first movie my wife and I ever saw together. Uh, I think that was 20 years ago. But no, I still won’t put up a Little Mermaid poster on the wall. Also, yes I know the “Carriage” noodle shape above is rotated clockwise 90 degrees. I did that on purpose as a silent protest against the death of carriages.]

OK, here’s a quickie Leftovers for Lunch post for today. Whenever we make potato salad for parties, we usually make extra and set it aside for ourselves. The next day, I usually make a potato salad sandwich. I know. It sounds a bit strange, but trust me, it’s actually pretty good. Kind of like an egg salad sandwich, but with potato in it.

We make our potato salad differently than the traditional American variety you might buy in those tubs at a supermarket. No mustard or dressing or onions or herbs, and light on the mayo. It’s a very light, clean tasting salad. We use a pretty high ratio of hard boiled eggs. We also throw in cubed cooked carrots, cucumbers (we use either the persian pickles or japanese cucumbers) and occasionally apples.

I like to spread it on warm french bread, but it tastes great on pretty much any type of bread. The great thing about potato salad in sandwiches is that the mixture clumps together, making it easily spreadable on bread. And since potato salad invariably tastes better the next day (or the day after that), it’s perfect for incorporating into leftover lunches.

I like flavored coffee.

I guess that counts as a sheepish confession. Though, I prefer to call it an antelopish or gazellish confession. You know how it goes: Wild animals and coffee.

I decided to say that up front so that all the hard-core coffee drinkers could immediately hit the back button and go back to drinking whatever passes for the Real Coffee Deal nowadays.

I also can’t drink coffee straight black. I need milk or cream or 1/2 and 1/2 in it. Or at least some whiskey, especially early in the morning. I suspect this is somewhat less of a heinous offense in the eyes of coffee drinkers (and alcoholics) around the world. But I’m throwing that out there too, just in case.

I also sometimes nuke day old coffee in the microwave, drink fricking Folger’s instant coffee on occasion, and I have been known to tentatively eat some of the grounds in the mistaken belief that it will make me grow a few inches.

I meant in height, you maniacs.

For the three people still with me after those confessions, congratulations!

OK. So I like the flavored coffee and coffee drinks, but I really hate to drop an Abe Lincoln every day at Stirbuks. So, we’ve been buying the standard Torani Syrup to flavor up our morning drinks. The only thing is that they’re sort of expensive, especially considering they’re mostly sugar water. We usually get the 750ml large sizes, and those usually run between $7 and $10 at specialty stores. On Amazon, I discovered you can pick up a three pack of syrup for $16.30 which comes out to about $5.40 a bottle.

Not too bad, but I was thinking - how hard could it be to just make your own coffee syrup at home?

The answer is that if you know how to boil water, you know how to make your own coffee syrup. The most difficult part is the flavoring. If you’re just looking to get simple sugar syrup, hey, add equal parts sugar and water together, reduce it by half, and there you go. I have to admit, I never really got into making simple syrup - but it’s a really handy thing to have around, especially when you need to flavor cold beverages. And yes, it’s just boiling sugar and water together.

I looked up a bunch of different recipes for coffee syrups, and a lot of them have you scraping vanilla bean pods, harvesting your own hazelnuts, etc. Ugh-a-bugga. The method I settled for flavoring the syrup just uses vanilla extract.

Yes, I realize that the price of these extracts if you buy them JUST to make your coffee syrup sort of defeats the purpose of making your own syrup. However, I think most people have Vanilla extract in the cupboard - and if you’re using a teaspoon, I think it’s worth it. Based on a 2 Fl. Oz. bottle of vanilla extract that costs $3.50, I think 1 tsp should run you about 30 to 40 cents.

I’m sure that using an authentic vanilla bean pod will make it taste a ton better - let me know if you try that out. My vanilla bean plant is tired after doing all those pushups this morning.

Vanilla Sugar Syrup

1 cup sugar — $0.35
1 tsp vanilla extract — $0.35
1 cup water

Total: $0.70

Get a pot. Dump the sugar, water and extract into it. Stir it up with a wooden spoon to kind of dissolve at least some of the sugar.

Flame up that pot with a medium flame. I wouldn’t walk away, because it won’t take that long. I’d also stir the pot once in awhile. Don’t watch the pot too hard, or it wont boil. Haha.

When it starts to boil, then reduce the heat and simmer the mo-fo. Everyone says to reduce it by half, but my eyes aren’t very accurate. So it’ll be about 4-7 minutes I think. It won’t really thicken up THAT much, which is correct because the syrup that you buy is pretty watery as well.

Let it cool, and that’s pretty much it. Congratulations.

This whole shebang seems to result in about 1 1/3 cups of syrup, or, if my shoddy math (and googling) is correct - about 1/3 Liter. So, 750ml (3/4 Liter) of Torani costs at the cheapest, say $5. That same amount of homemade coffee syrup would be, uh, about $1.60? Please don’t check my math work, I’m that embarrassed.

In any case, $5 versus $1.60 seems worth a shot. I suspect that the price will change dramatically if you use real vanilla bean pods, or if you try other extracts like almond or hazelnut. Who knows. The syrup I made seemed to be adequate, although it definitely wasn’t as fragrant. I might try doubling the vanilla extract next time or something.

The consistency of the syrup is about right. It doesn’t seem like it’d be sticky, but I did spill a considerable quanity on the stove top. The resulting mess was both sticky and tasty, though not in that exact order…

One thing I noticed is that while I don’t require any of the preservatives that Torani puts in their syrup, they also sometimes add stuff like citric acid. I didn’t notice it at all until I tasted the store-bought and homemade coffee syrup side by side. The citric acid definitely adds a little something, a bit of a zing. I haven’t thought about experimenting with stand-ins for the citric acid yet - maybe some lemon?

I know some folks also recommended using brown sugar in some of the recipes - I think I might give that one a go later. Others try to use homemade caramel. But I think I’ll leave that one to other people. Boiling sugar and water for 5 minutes is plenty dangerous enough for me right now.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, there was a Bag of Chips. These chips were called Pringles Bold Crunch, and they were of the Jalapeno variety. No, I’m not going to stick the “N-yay” on the “n” in Jalapeno, because I’m too lazy. Anyhow, were these bold? Yep. Were they crunchy? Quite. Did they have a Jalapeno taste? Indubitably. And were they Pringles?

NOPE.

And, this IS their story…

OK, I have to admit I’ve been suffering writer’s block after a can of Juanita’s Pozole fell out of the sky and hit me on the head. Actually, it fell out of the kitchen cabinet but since my high cabinets were made for aliens 8 feet tall, and aliens tend to fall out of the sky, I guess you could say that an alien can of Juanita’s Pozole hit me on the head after falling out of the sky.

Thank you very much for the scattered applause.

I had originally written up a fake interview with a Mr. Bold C. Pringles. The C stands for “Crunchy”, or at least that’s what he told me. You know how it is. People lie sometimes just because they think they can get away with it…

In the interview, I was going to have Mr. Pringles go postal on me, or at least call me a lazy, good fer nothing product reviewer. I was going to make him all in your face bold and crunchy, booyah! He was going to berate my chip eating skills and tell me to go back to the dollar store and return them because I didn’t deserve to eat them.

I was going to finally muster up the strength to launch my own counterattack: these Pringles ARE NOT PRINGLES. No they’re not. I don’t care how delicious they are, they’re not fricking Pringles, no sir. They don’t look like Pringles. They don’t really taste like them. And they’re not in a can, they’re in a bag.

FAIL.

But you know, I’ve learned something today. No one cares about fake interviews with products. Unless they’re really awesome. We should just eat or use the products and then type up a short single spaced paragraph on the Smith Corona (not beer you idiot) in which we discuss exactly what we liked and disliked about it. We shouldn’t bring any emotion or idiocratic (that’s not a word) idiosyncrasies into the conversation.

Instead, we should sit properly at the table when eating our chips and talk about them rationally with our friends and neighbors. For instance, the heady aroma of the Jalapeno (sorry, again no N-yays) that tickles my nose as it wafts out of the bag. And the powdery pifflepuzz of tangy seasonings that glossen each wittle chip goodly. Forsooth, the wunderful crackle and munch of the compressed potato snackling as it slides dutifully down the throat. Verily thy capsicum, it tingles the tongue or bung. But oh ye small but bold chipple (or nipple), why dost thou surface be uncurvaceous and non-stacking? Get thee to a cannery, why woulds’t thou be a breeder of flat chips? Woggle, woggle the pringlebones think they’re bold and munchy but hey-ho your price has skyblocketed while you become uncannedeth!

And so on.

Price: $1 for 5.5 oz.
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

[Editor’s Note: Sorry, this was another one of “those” reviews. I suffer from Glossolalia occasionally. It only goes away if I write a review out of it, generally of the Reverse Flowers for Algernon variety. Companies hate me for this incoherence. I receive 4 or 5 emails a month telling me how weird or strange I am or smell. I can’t help it, my jeans are blue. But seriously, these are pretty decent chips, but they’re just not Pringles. Damnit, Pringles come in a can - the end.]

Hola. I’m JA, and yet the amount of Mexican food cooked in our household when I was a kid was pretty significant. I grew up on it. Granted, it was kinda “fake” Mexican food - the kind that the Better Homes and Gardens included in their cookbooks in the 1950s in order to show how ethnically diverse they were. But still, it was better than Taco Bell. Not that I didn’t eat at Taco Bell frequently too.

To this day, it’s kind of stuck with me. I would say Mexican food is my favorite cuisine. When people learn I don’t eat sushi, sashimi and wasabi, they usually say, what kind of freak Japanese person are you? Yes, I’d rather eat a plate of enchiladas than a plate of sashimi any day. Well, I do eat a lot of rice.

The story is that my step-grandfather, who was born here in the 20s in the OC, learned to really like Mexican food. And that was passed down to my mom, when she came over after the war. I guess I’m continuing the tradition. My dad and brother aren’t as huge fans of it.

The complaint I hear the most from Asian Americans about Mexican food is that they don’t like the cumin flavors. They say it smells like B.O. Yeah. And natto, fish sauce, stinky tofu and durian smell like farking flowers.

(By the way, a post about Natto is coming soon.)

We make quite a few enchiladas and enchilada-type casseroles at home nowadays. For some reason, I’ve never really thought about making my own enchilada sauce. I usually buy the cans, made by Ortega or La Palma or whatever’s on sale.

One thing I always noticed, when you get red sauce enchiladas at a halfway decent Mexican restaurant, the sauce seems a little different than what you get out of a can. I think it’s less tomato-ey and more brown in color. When I made my own, I discovered that sure enough, it’s more like what they have in restaurants.

Actually, the first time I made the sauce was when I was all set to roll up some enchiladas and I discovered we didn’t have any cans left. I was too lazy to drive to the store. I think some people may not like this type of enchilada sauce because it’s not what they’re used to. It has a slightly bitter note to it. I like it a lot better, however, and I think it comes in a little cheaper than buying cans.

Now, as I’ve said before, every time I try to do the old recipe under $3, I get 99 people writing in telling me that I haven’t calculated the price of a pinch of salt correctly. My response has always been that it’s not so much the exact price you should be concerned with. It’s the fact that you’re making this at home, instead of buying it in a can. Five cents misquoted here and there isn’t going to make a lot of difference.

The amount of mail I get about it is tiring, but I’ve decided to do the recipes again. And yes, there are a whole lot of blogs and content sites who’ve jumped on the cheap bandwagon and started doing “recipes under $X amount”. I’m proud to say I was doing it since the beginning, before it was cool. I may have not had the original idea, but this blog was one of the first to do it.

Enchilada Sauce

4 tbsp white flour — $0.05
1/4 cup cooking oil — $0.05
2 tbsp chile powder — $0.05
4 cloves garlic, smashed — $0.10
1 cup tomato sauce - $0.30
1 tsp salt — negligible
Cayenne pepper if desired
2 cups hot water

Total: $0.55

Get a pan. Get a wooden spoon. Well, you don’t need a wooden spoon, but I like it better. Also, it might work better if your pan is not a non-stick variety. But whatever.

Over low to med heat, brown the flour and chile powder. Make sure to stir it pretty frequently, scraping into the corners. I forget how long it takes, probably a few minutes. Just try not to burn it. If it starts to smoke, take it off heat.

Then add the oil and mix it into a paste. You could probably do the oil first and make a roux, but the recipe I took this from said flour first.

Slowly add the water and tomato sauce, stirring frequently until you get the right consistency. You can fix it by adding more liquid, so don’t add too much to start. Throw in the garlic cloves and salt to taste. Add cayenne pepper if you like it spicy. Simmer it on low until thickened slightly. It’ll probably be about 20-30 minutes. Off heat, remove garlic cloves and let it cool a bit. You’re ready to make enchiladas.

This recipe is an adaptation of one I found online somewhere. I can’t remember which one it is. It’s about good enough for a medium pan of enchiladas, depending on how wet you like your enchiladas. You can easily multiply the quantities in the recipe to get more sauce. You may want to mess around with the amount of garlic. Also, this is a “smooth” sauce - I’ve seen many others that include crushed tomatoes or sauteed onions for a chunkier one.

I dunno if toasting the flour is really necessary, but it did seem to take the uncooked flour taste away from the sauce. Just be sure you don’t burn the flour.

I omitted cumin in the recipe because I didn’t think it was necessary. You can throw some in, and for that matter, any other spices you want. The cayenne may not be necessary if you’re going to add heat to the enchilada in other ways. I increased the tomato sauce from 2/3 cup to a full cup - I think some people may like even more tomato taste in it. To get the right consistency you may need to add more or less water as well. This sauce will keep pretty well in the fridge for a week or so.

By the way, enchiladas are one of the messiest things I’ve ever cooked. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I always make a huge mess and use up a ton of dishes. I always feel like a four year old after making them. Wait, I always feel like a four year old anyway…

Ga Ga Goo Goo, Coo Coo Ca Choo.