Sausage Breakfast Sandwich

The Meal: Sausage Breakfast Sandwich
The Drink: Orange Juice

Breakfast at McDonalds has always been their best offering and the Sausage and Egg McMuffin has been a favourite of mine since forever.  I've been making a similar creation at home for a long time and it provides a welcome change to my typical bowl of cereal.

Breakfast Sandwich and Juice

Ingredients:
Sausage Patty
English Muffin
Egg
Cheese

There's not much more to it than frying the egg and sausage, toasting the English muffin, then piling it all together with the cheese and then topping with ketchup.
Served with a delicious glass of not-from-concentrate orange juice, it's tough to beat in the morning.

Slammin' some Beef Sandwiches with Dead Rappers

The Meal: Shredded Beefwhich with Gangsta Slaw
The Soundtrack: Dead Rappers Playlist
The Drink: Sailor Jerry's

Last weekend while I was out camping, the topic came up about dead rappers.  There are a lot of good rappers with punched tickets.  Apparently it's a tough business.  At least it was, back when to be a rapper with any cred, you truly were a gangsta and lived the life.  Bullet holes, heart attacks, HIV, even if you managed to live through the 90's it appears that the high living seems to have caught up with a bunch of them.
So I put together a play list with some of the best starting with my personal favourite: Big Pun.  At over 500lbs, his heart just couldn't support his 'crushing' lifestyle, even though he wasn't a playa.  Biggie, Pac, Eazy-E, Nate Dogg, Jam Master Jay and new addition MCA are some of the highlights.
Last week, the playlist wasn't a big hit at 2am when the crowd desperately wanted more pop dance tunes, but tonight it was fully appreciated by all!

Sweet Sailor Jerrys

Another fine note for the evening, Sailor Jerry's Spiced rum was on sale at Coop today.  Couldn't turn that down and what a delicious drink that makes!

I did eventually eat tonight too, although as you can tell from the post, it was quite late.

Spice Rub

Shredded Beef Ingredients:
4.5lb Roast
3 Cloves garlic, crushed

Chopped Veggies

2 Tsp Paprika
2 Tsp Garlic powder
Dried parsley
1 Tsp Ground black pepper
2 Tsp Chili powder
2 Tsp Cayenne pepper
Salt
1/2 Tsp Mustard powder
1/2 Dried tarragon
1 Bottle Beer
Worcestershire sauce
1 Onion
1 Red pepper
2 Jalapenos

Beef roast with Rub

 So the recipe I got from this website with a few of my own modifications. All of the spices get blended together in a bowl and then rubbed onto the roast.  The onion, red pepper, and jalapenos get chopped.  The beef goes into the slow cooker with the spices, the diced go veggies on top and then the pot gets filled up with beer.  The beer didn't quite cover the roast so I added some cola to make sure the whole thing cooked for the 10 hours I left it on low.

Once the meat was cooked, I took out the roast and shredded it with 2 forks.  If its properly cooked, it should just fall apart with ease.  The liquid seemed far too runny, so I boiled it down on the stove and then added it to the beef.

Coleslaw Ingredients:
1/2 Cup Miracle Whip
1/3 Cup Sugar
3 Tbls Oil
1 Tbls Vinegar
1/2 Tsp Poppy Seeds
Salt

Mix it all together and then add to a selection of cabbage and carrots.  Chill before serving.There's really nothing gangsta about it, but it made for a more eye catching title.

The Beefwich is exactly as it looks.  Bun, beef, slaw, bun. Delicious!!

Tandoori Chicken and a new iPod Playlist

Chicken Tandoori and Basmati Rice

The Dinner: Tandoori Chicken
The Soundtrack: Party Playlist on new iPod
The Drink: Rum and Coke

Well, it appears that my old, broken screen iPod is officially gone.  Fortunately, I was able to make a deal with a retail outlet to give me a new replacement iPod in exchange for money.  So now I have a brand new iPod that is pretty much exactly the same as the old one, except with a clean, unbroken screen.
To celebrate, its party mix time!

New iPod just like this one

Ingredients:
Chicken
Plain yogurt
Tandoori spice
Olive Oil

The Tandoori chicken needs to marinate so I started the process last night.  Rather than put together my own spices, I had already procured a tandoori spice mix from an Indian grocery store from the NE. Makes the process pretty easy.  Mix the yogurt, spice and a little oil in a marinade bag.  Skin the chicken and poke a few holes to help the sauce infuse into the meet and then put it into the bag and let it marinate for 8+ hours (I did it the night before so it was close to 24 hours).

Tandoori Chicken on the BBQ

When its dinner time, toss the chicken on the BBQ and cook it until all the pink is gone on the inside and its nice and red and crispy on the outside. Top with cilantro and serve with basmati rice and whatever else you fancy.

Greek Night

The Meal: Greek Night - Lamb Kabob Pita Wraps and Greek Salad

The Soundtrack: The Tragically Hip - Up to Here

Coming down with a bit of a cold, I decided that I wasn't going very far from the house today so why not put together a mildly time intensive multi-part meal?  Besides being less than 100% healthwise, the evening started off well.  I cut up the lamb roast and put together the marinade while talking to my parents and put together the Tzatziki Sauce and the Pita recipe while chatting on the phone with my buddy.  Then when it came time to put on the music, I realized that I had left my iPod downtown after a rafting excursion and walked off.  In the middle of my Pita cooking, I had to turn off the oven, drive off to the water front and search.  As to be expected; gone.  So I guess its back to CDs and Vinyl for now...

For the final cooking and assembly, I tossed on Up to Here, the first full length album from the Tragically Hip.  Its a classic Canadian album that I can listen to again and again.

The Lamb: I started with the lamb since it needed the most time to marinate. The lamb selection at the local store is somewhat limited so I bought a leg roast and cut it up into cubes and placed them in a ziplock baggie along with the marinade for several hours in the fridge.  After the marinading, I soaked some wooden skewers in water and then put the kabobs on the grill.

Ingredients:

1 Lamb Leg Roast

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Fresh Oregano (Chopped)

Garlic Cloves (Minced)

The Pitas: After the marinade, I put together the Pita dough, since it needs to rise for about 2 hours.  Having never made it before, I got the recipe from here.  I pretty much followed that recipe.  It was fairly easy to put together other than rolling out the dough which was still pretty sticky.  It also took a while to run all the pitas through my oven since I had to take a break right in the middle (see iPod note above). But they sat on the counter like champs and still tasted great after I fried them up in the pan.

Ingredients:

4 Cups Flour

1 Tlbs Dry Active Yeast

1 Tlbs Sugar

1 1/2 Cup Warm Water

1 Tlbs Olive Oil

Salt

The Tzatziki Sauce: I got the recipe from another website.  I had never made tzatziki before and I followed this recipe.  It turned out very liquidy which appears to be a common issue according to the comments.  In the future, I'll try this again and see if I can make it less liquidy.  The sauce tasted great on the pita so it was still worth the effort.

The Salad: To go with the Kabob Pita Wrap, I whipped up a Greek salad.  The dressing consisted of the following: Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, Oregano, Salt and Pepper. Quantities can be varied to taste.

I put that dressing on top of my salad which consisted of Cucumbers, Feta Cheese, Tomatoes, Red Onion, Kalamata Olives.

Lamb Kabob Pita Wraps: After frying up the pita, I put on the lettuce, tomato, olives, red onions and then the lamb kabob, minus the skewer of course and topped with the Tzatziki sauce. Then I slapped it on the plate with the salad and it was finally chow time.