Category: Reviews

By Posted on Posted in Reviews 1 Comment

If you ever find your self hurtling through Pennsylvania on I-80 and think, dang I could go for a good sub or are for some reason in the town of Clarion Pennsylvania for whatever reason; be sure to check out Bob’s Sub and Sandwich Shop.  We were on our way to visit relatives and looking to kill some time before we met up with the rest of our party when we decided to try the local fare and we ended up at Bob’s.  Bob’s Sub and Sandwich Shop was interesting, the decor was something, the ambiance was strange and the restroom was tiny and a little bit frightening, but the food was great.  I got the Spicy Italian Junior with everything and Vanessa got the Deli Junior minus Onion.  Both were incredible, piled high with enough meat to shame the larger national sandwich shops collectively.  Shame on you national sandwich shops for cheating me on my meat all these years.  Healthy the subs may not have been but tasty and served on a warm and toasted bun they were.

So if you ever find your self near Clarion Pennsylvania be sure to check out Bob’s Sub and Sandwich Shop, I am trying to come up with excuses to go back already.

You can find Bob’s Sub and Sandwich Shop at 501 Main Street, Clarion, PA 16214-1167 or on Google Maps

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By Posted on Posted in Misc Food, Recipes, Reviews No Comments

Maybe this is blog suicide, but I stumbled upon a really neat website today that is sure to be a great tool to any cook, who knows what they are craving and just can’t figure out what to cook.  Say you want some salty and savory food but nothing comes to mind.  Well the Food Finder on Yummly.com will help you pick a recipe that will fit your cravings.

The food finder works by taking your tastes and their understanding of food and pulling together recipes from some of the biggest recipes sources on the web to recommend recipes that accurately reflect what you searched for that it thinks you will like.  And from playing with it for a short while, it works, it works really well.  I am hungry just looking at the recommendations it made for me.

Yummly brings new meaning to the term discovery cooking, it can help you discover new tastes you have by making recommendations based on what you already like.

Not only is Yummly pioneering new ground with the the way it finds recipes for you to enjoy it is a great new use of social media and the long tail of cooking knowledge.  The community can make modifications to a recipe or create a new version of a recipe.  The most common modifications are then presented with the original recipe.  The knowledge of the masses now can apply to cooking and recipes in an easier to use way than ever before.

Now that they have all of this, I can’t want to see what happens when it makes it to the iPad as an app, talk about a great cookbook.

Check it all out at http://www.yummly.com/

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By Posted on Posted in Grilled Goodness, Recipes, Reviews No Comments

Tonight we marched onward with the chicken and with such nice weather it would have been a crime not to grill out, and grill out we did.  My wife scoured the internet and came back with a recipe she started with on Recipe Zaar for ‘Amazing Chicken Marinade’.  I don’t know that it was amazing but it was pretty good.  After a surprisingly strenuous medicine ball work out, I fired up the grill.  Well technically I got the charcoal chimney started.  Once the grill and charcoal were ready, I lubed up the rack with a paper towel and some cooking oil, threw a small handful of mesquite chips on the coals and put the chicken on.

Chicken Breast on the Grill

Ingredients
1/4 c cider vinegar
3 tbsp mustard seeds
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 lime, juiced
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp olive oil
ground black pepper
6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves

Instructions
Crush 1 tbsp of the mustard in a mortar and pestle.  Then in a large, non-reactive container, whisk together ingredients beginning with cider vinegar through salt.  Then whisk in olive oil and pepper.  Place chicken in the mixture.  Cover and marinate chicken in the fridge 8 hours or overnight.  Remove chicken from marinade and grill for about 10 minutes per side over medium high heat.

Even though the recipe wasn’t mine or Vanessa’s for that matter;  it was simple and with a little tweaking (mustard seeds over mustard) it was most tasty so I thought I would share it here.  Enjoy.

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By Posted on Posted in Recipes, Reviews 1 Comment

A while back I came into luck and had received a can of Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce and had been saving it for something special.  Well that time has arrived and like the title says what happened as a result ‘ain’t yo mamma’s corn bread’, its a smokey, mildly spicy kick in the pants that will continue to remind you that you ate this delicate piece 30 minutes later.  Now usually I make corn bread with chili to help absorb the bite, not so with this corn bread it may become a staple to stand on its own.

With our company pot luck in mind I decided I might cook a dish up to remember and as we were asked to bring a ‘dish to pass’ what better dish to pass than some innocent looking corn bread.  So with that you might want the recipe which I scavenged out an old issue of Cooking Light, so here it is.

Chipotle Bacon Corn Bread

Ingredients
1 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c yellow cornmeal
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/3 c fat-free buttermilk
2 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 tbsp chopped canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled
cooking spray

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425°F

Combine first 7 ingredients in a large bowl, stirring well. Combine buttermilk, butter, chiles, and egg in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture; stir just until moist. Fold in bacon. Pour batter into an 8-inch square baking pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 425° for 18 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack.

Of note in the haste of preparing this dish I did forget to include the baking powder and it still came out very nicely.

Well tomorrow will be the taste test, will have to see if I come home with any leftovers.

Edit: The cornbread was a hit last week at the potluck, infact it was so good I made another batch today minus the bacon to go with our chipotle and black bean soup, should be a spicey/tasty combo.

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By Posted on Posted in Blogroll, Recipes, Reviews, Smoked Goodness 3 Comments

Well before we get right down to it prehaps I should mention that today was an exceptional day for smoking (bitter sarcism injected throughout that last statement), if I had not been forced, have already prepared my meat for smoking I would have just thrown in the towel for smoking today, but I had no choice, so I did what you do when you have no choice.  Upon rising at 0900 this morning it was rainy and windy, so I thought I would wait tell after noon to smoke my fatty, after all it had already been rolled.  Well noon brought around no positive change in the weather so I just did what I had to do, I got the charcoal ready.

Smokin' on a rainy day

I digress so after getting the smoker going in less than ideal smoking weather I popped the fatty on the smoker and let it smoke for 1…2…3…did I mention it was windy…4 hours until the thermometer read 165.

My Fatty on the smoker

Once it was done I pulled it off, let it rest and then dug in.

Picture of the Fatty

A sliced fatty

All said and done it was worth the effort, my tomato basil fatty has been my first fatty but certainly not my last.  It took a chunk of the day to smoke this fatty over charcoal and bits of hickory and cherry but it was worth it.  It was a culinary delight and an arterial nightmare.

Disclaimer:  While I may rave that this was in fact a delicious meal it would not be right to omit the opinion of my wife, who claims it was good but salty, it was certainly a man meal.

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