Donut French Toast: The Breakfast of Kings

Sorry about the picture quality -
it's a little out of focus.

This is one of those posts that make me glad my cardiologist doesn't know I have a blog, because in it I detail an awesome breakfast which was totally delicious as well as being pretty low on the heart-healthy scale: Donut French Toast.

Now, you can accompany your donut french toast with anything you like, but I really went for the Trifecta Of Density by siding it with mashed-potato pancakes and thick-sliced bacon. (In my defense, I cooked the pancakes using olive oil and that was the only slice of bacon I've eaten in about two months.)

Anyway, Donut French Toast is wicked simple to make. You'll need some leftover cake donuts - plain is fine, cinnamon/sugar is great, cider donuts are even better. (Don't use raised donuts.) Split the donuts in half, bagel-style, using a sharp knife. Make your usual favorite beaten egg mixture for dipping, but instead of just dipping, allow the donuts to soak a bit, cut side down, in the egg. Flip the donuts over to coat the other side, too, and then fry them, cut-side down, until browned. Carefully flip them over and fry the rounded side. Serve with your favorite sides. You can serve them with syrup if you like, but we didn't find it necessary.

Mashed-potato pancakes are similarly easy to make. Start with some leftover mashed potatoes. Season with a little extra salt and pepper. Crack an egg into them and beat the egg in, then add some baking powder and enough flour to make a rather still batter. Use a spoon or a portioning scoop to put them into a hot skillet - they'll rise as they cook, and when they're browned on one side you can flip them over and brown them on the other. 

The combo is delicious, and guaranteed to stick with you all day until supper.

Special K Chocolatey Delight

Special K - the flagship of the Kellogg's "good for you" cereal brands - is now available in a heavily-sugared version which includes tiny little chocolate bars. 

For the record, even though they're almost as sweet as Cap'n Crunch, they're not all that bad - a good hearty whole grain flake with lots of crunch - but they're much more like Sugar Frosted Flakes with bits of Hershey Bar mixed in than traditional Special K. It's like Kellogg's just said, "Fuck it, just give 'em candy." 

Toaster Pastry Heaven

Recently spotted at Big Lots: huge, 48-count boxes of Pop-Tarts!  Each of these wastebasket-sized packages contain six times the standard number of sugary, crusty frosted delights - 24 each of frosted strawberry and nutritionally-defunct Brown Sugar Cinnamon.  It's POP-TART HEAVEN!

For a long time, Brown Sugar Cinnamon was my favorite variety of Pop-Tart.  While it's true that no Pop-Tart is exactly the epitome of healthy eating, Brown Sugar Cinnamon is almost the perfect storm of empty calories. There isn't even the pretense of fruit there to make Mom feel less guilty about abandoning breakfast to The Big K. It's kind of like the Pop-Tart development team said, "You know what? The hell with it! Skip the fruit jam and let's just fill some of 'em up with sugar! That's what the little bastards really want anyway. And put frosting on it, too."

They were right. When I was a little bastard, I LOVED Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, and my cruel heartless mother would hardly ever buy them. (I think she said something like, "You're not getting that shit for breakfast.")

McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg AND BACON

I noticed a smallish sign dangling from the menu display at my local McDonald's last week:  Add Bacon To Any Sandwich: 99 Cents. That has some serious potential for dietary abuse. Imagine, if you will, a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Bacon.

Though I rarely eat anything other than breakfast at McDonald's, that sign was still highly relevant to my interests.  So this morning, when I stopped to pick up the best breakfast sandwich on the planet, a Sausage McMuffin With Egg, I decided to BACONIZE IT.  

"Sausage McMuffin with Egg, please.  And add bacon to it."

The woman behind the counter looked a little surprised.  "You want to add bacon to that? Really?"

"Yes," I replied. "I'm crazy. Please do it or I will stand here and bark like a dog."

She laughed and keyed the order in.

I did not think it possible to improve upon a Sausage McMuffin with Egg.  I was wrong. This sandwich was BORN TO BEAR BACON. The smoky umami of the bacon pairs perfectly with the egg, of course, but also highlights and enriches the already-outstanding flavor of the sausage.  If you already like Sausage McMuffins with Egg, you should add bacon to it at least once to experience this awesomeness for yourself.

And McDonald's, I say to you: Offer a Sausage McMuffin With Bacon And Egg as a regular menu item. It's amazing (and I don't ever use that word lightly because it's trite and overplayed.) Just remember it was my idea and I'll expect at least a sweetly-loaded Arch Card for my troubles.

A Sack Of Frozen Pancakes???

Really, now...is it that difficult to make pancakes?

No, of course it isn't.  And homemade pancakes are a small fraction of the price of bagged, and they taste better, and they don't take all that much time to whip up.

Now, you really should have a pancake recipe somewhere in your recipe collection, but just in case you don't, here's the one Maryanne uses.  It's easy to remember, too, because the ingredients are "a symphony of ones."

Maryanne's Pancakes
Makes about 10 4-inch pancakes
Recipe may be doubled

1 cup of flour

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 egg, beaten

1 cup of milk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, stir the flour, sugar, and baking powder together.  In a smaller bowl, beat the egg, milk, and oil together.  Stir the milk mixture into the flour mixture with a fork just long enough to make a smooth batter.  Set it aside for a few minutes to allow the baking powder to start to work.

Heat up a skillet until drops of water flicked off your fingers onto the skillet dance around and sizzle. If you have a non-stick or well-seasoned cast iron skillet, you will not need any grease, otherwise grease the skillet lightly.  Pour batter by the ladle onto the skillet and allow the pancakes to cook until the edges are kind of dry and the top surface is studded with little bubble craters.  Turn the pancakes and cook briefly to brown off the top.

Blueberry option: After the batter is mixed, stir in half a cup or more of blueberries.

New Kellogg's Crunchy Nut

Hey look! It's NEW! Kellogg's Crunchy Nut cereal, with Nuts in Every Bite!  (That is an important point.  Biting nuts just isn't worth it if one can't have nuts in every bite.)

I am totally not wowed by this cereal, which is basically a sugar-coated corn flake with little bits of peanuts glued in place by the sugar coating. There aren't enough peanuts to lend much flavor, and despite the cover art clearly depicting a honey dipper drooling with bee poop, they don't taste much like honey either.

What they do taste like is Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, i.e. nothing special. Because Crunchy Nut is new and Kellogg's is trying to get people to buy it, you're likely to find it on sale at your local supermarket and you should be able to find some coupons for it as well.  So if you have someone at home who likes Frosted Flakes, you might want to give them a try while they're really cheap.

And then, who knows?  Maybe stack the promotional sales with the coupons and stock up on enough of them to last you until they make it into the job lot stores when they're discontinued.

Back of House at McDonald's

Longtime readers here at Dave's Cupboard know that I'm a fan of McDonald's breakfast offerings. I don't think any fast-food company even comes close to Mickey D's when it comes to breakfast sandwiches. If I were King of the World, I'd give a knighthood to the dude who invented the Sausage McMuffin with Egg.

So, when I was invited to a "behind-the-scenes" blog event to tour a local McDonald's restaurant at breakfast time to see for myself what's involved with getting an Egg McMuffin from the griddle to the customer, I jumped at the chance.  

Before I start though, there's a few things you should know.  We were invited to the tour by Charlene Durham, an account supervisor with Cronin & Company LLC, the PR firm for the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts McDonald's Owner/Operator Association.  And at the end of the tour and presentation, Lynnafred and I were each given a tote bag containing McSwag like promotional t-shirts, a notepad and pen, coupons for Mickey D's oatmeal, and a $10 Arch Card. (The tote bags in particular are very cool - the "fabrics" they're made of are former McDonald's advertising banners, a great way to recycle that tough and durable material.)

Okay.  Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, on with the tour, which we attended with fellow bloggers Julie Kieras who writes A Year With Mom And Dad, and Cheryl Budge, whose eponymous blog can be found at cherylbudge.com.

There were two purposes to the tour: One was to highlight the nutritional features of breakfast at McDonald's, and the other was to show via a "backstage tour" how a typical McDonald's operates.  To make this post a little more manageable, I'll break it up into two sections as well. We'll start with breakfast part and move on later to the tour.

As I've said before, a McDonald's breakfast sandwich seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way to start the day.  When I eat breakfast at home (usually on the weekend) it's normally two eggs, toast or an English muffin, and a few slices of bacon or a couple of sausages. That's basically the same thing that you'd find in an Egg McMuffin or a Sausage McMuffin with Egg.

What I didn't know was that a standard Egg McMuffin only has 300 calories and 12g of fat. And if you leave off the cheese like I do (because I'm not all that crazy about the taste of eggs and cheese together) you can trim that down to 250 calories and 8.5g of fat. Seriously, that's a pretty light breakfast.

My beloved Sausage McMuffin Wtih Egg comes out a little less trim, though, with 450 calories and 27g of fat in it's full, cheesy form (400 calories and 24 g fat with the cheese omitted.) Still, that compares favorably with the homemade breakfast I outlined.

As part of our tour, nutritionist Nancy Dell pointed out other McDonald's breakfast offerings that are light and reasonably healthy, like the Fruit 'n' Yogurt Parfait at 160 calories, and the Fruit & Maple Oatmeal with 290 calories.

All of my reviews of McDonald's stuff have focused on how they taste and not their nutritional profile.  I don't really see that changing significantly in the future, but it was interesting to find out that the only fast food breakfasts I really like aren't as horrible for you as the shrill looneys like to claim.

So on to the tour.

Lynnafred and I had never been behind the scenes at a McDonald's restaurant before, so we were both looking forward to this. We were there as much for the curiosity factor as anything else, but as it turned out the tour was both interesting and fun - interesting because we found out a lot about what makes a typical McDonald's franchise tick, and fun because we were encouraged to go hands-on with some of the equipment.

We started off by meeting Keith Santacroce, the owner/operator of the McDonald's restaurant in New Britain where we met - one of several franchises he owns and which he operates with the help of his family.  He takes a great deal of pride in both his own restaurants and the McDonald's organization in general and his enthusiasm is pretty infectious.

One of the goals of the tour was to show off new products like their Strawberry-Banana and Wild Berry Smoothies, and the smoothie machine was the first stop on our tour.  I'd actually reviewed them back in September 2010, but it was very cool to see the process up close and personal. The equipment itself is pretty bad-assed. The top part houses the control panel, a niche for the blender, and a water spout upon which the used blender cup is inverted; the spout then jets hot water into the cup to clean it and ready it for the next smoothie.  The bottom part, which you can see in the picture to the left, has compartment holding various ingredients - one slot for the yogurt, for example, and others for the fruit ingredients like the berry mixture, banana puree, and strawberries. It's all quite efficient - the machine automatically measures the portions and dispenses them.  All the operator has to do is push a few buttons to select the product and the size.  The machine drops the ingredients and the ice into the blender container and whips everything into frozen deliciousness, and the machine operator just pours it into a cup and hands it over to the customer.  It takes just seconds to whip up a perfect smoothie, and the results are absolutely consistent every time.

It's so easy even a middle-aged
food blogger can do it!

Each of us on the tour had the opportunity to make a smoothie or a frozen strawberry lemonade for ourselves, and there was a lot of laughter as we fumbled with the simple controls of the machine.  The smoothies are every bit as delicious as they were when I first tasted them, but they're still a bit on the sweet side for me, though they're primarily fruit, yogurt and ice with a little sugar added.  (No high-fructose corn syrup here - thanks, McDonald's.)

Naturally, since we were at McDonald's at breakfast time, we were also shown what was involved in making Egg McMuffins.  One of the things that makes Mickey D's stand out above other fast food places at breakfast is their use of freshly cooked whole eggs - there aren't any pre-sliced, pre-cooked slices of "egg product" like you find at Dunkin' Donuts. 

Fresh whole eggs  are cooked eight at a time in specially-made egg rings.  After the eggs are cracked into the rings, they're covered with a rectangular lid and a small amount of water is added. Steam cooks the tops of the eggs while the griddle fries the bottom, so they fully cook without having to be turned.

I asked Keith how his crew knows how much food to prepare at any given time, since the cooked eggs are held warm in anticipation of an order for a very limited time before being discarded. He explained that they reduce waste by using a continual analysis of food sales. Every day, a chart is printed for each cooking station showing a cooking schedule - in this case, what time of the morning any number of eggs should get started on the griddle. The appropriate charts (one of which is barely visible in the picture here at the top center) are posted at each cooking station.  "It's not a flawless solution," Keith told me, "There will always be some waste.  But this system holds it down to a minimum."

The cooked eggs are held in a warming cabinet for just 12 minutes before being tossed (you can see the importance of "just-in-time" production here) along with the sliced Canadian bacon and lightly toasted English muffins. Everything is ready to assemble at the time a customer places an order.  The standard deadline for preparing an Egg McMuffin, from the time the order is posted to the time it's sent to the front to the customer, is 35 seconds. Lynnafred volunteered to put together a couple of McMuffins for us.

Uniform tomato slices

We also had a tour of the restaurant's walk-in refrigerator/freezer unit. The extraordinary part about a McDonald's walk-in is its ordinariness.  I was astounded by the volume of fresh ingredients on hand - the turnover must be incredible - but when it comes right down to it, the Mickey D's walk-in is like just about every other restaurant's walk-in.  Fresh stuff is brought in semi-prepared - the salads, for example, are pre-cut and pre-mixed and packed in food-service sized bags and tomato slices for the burgers are all a uniform size because they are shipped pre-sliced in long trays of similar-gauge slices - and this is no different from the way many other restaurants buy vegetables.  The boxes in which the bags are shipped are also clearly and prominently marked with sell-by dates to be sure that the stock is always fresh.

In the freezer section, we found boxes of french fries, hash browns, and meat patties. McDonald's ships all of their patties frozen, saying that they are better able to maintain quality that way.  But like the eggs in the Egg McMuffins, burgers are cooked in the restaurant and held for a few minutes warm so sandwiches can be assembled to order.  Back when I was a kid, the local McDonald's would have big piles of burgers waiting under heat lamps, pre-cooked in anticipation of a lunchtime rush, but those days are gone forever.

By the end of the tour, Lynnafred and I were fairly impressed by the efficiency of the operation and by the quality of the ingredients. I'm more convinced than ever that the best fast food breakfast is found under the Golden Arches. And while they're still not my top choice for a cheeseburger (sorry, Ronald) I give them credit for living up to their promise of fast, fresh service using top-quality ingredients.

The Triumphant Return of Who Let You Cook?!

Lynnafred here.

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately. I've been making dinners, coming up with creative new lunches, and generally been spending a lot more time than should be normal in the kitchen. (Dave even told you all about my most recent baking rampage which resulted in two full batches of cookies, and two half batches of cookies, for well over 100 cookies total.)

So it should come as no surprise that when my friend and partner writer over at Lynnafred's Fashion Disasters, Nannerkins, stayed overnight because of the recent tornado, the first thing we did in the morning was look for something to eat. And what happens when the only things in the fridge are cheese, meat, eggs, and a green pepper? If you said omelet, you're close. But we were far too lazy for the whole "omelet" thing, so we went for dirty scrambled eggs instead.

"Dirty" scrambled eggs are one of our favorite morning snacks where we just take whatever we have in the fridge and throw it into our eggs. They're not pretty, but they taste delicious.

This one's got kielbasa, green peppers and cheese in it. The one below has ham, cheese, and green peppers in it.

They're a really easy thing to make in the morning (especially if you're omelet impaired, like Yours Truly over here.) I usually chuck the meat and veggies in the pan first to saute in the butter, then pour the eggs over the entire lot, and as they're cooking, add the cheese and mix it all up until the eggs are set and the cheese is melty. DELICIOUS!!

Dunkin Donuts Big n Toasty

Photo by Dunkin' Donuts

Even though Dunkin' Donuts shops are all over the place (there are four of them in my hometown alone, for example) it might be a little hard for you to find their new Big N' Toasty breakfast sandwich. When I walked into the Dunkies around the corner from my house this morning at 7:00 to order one, the pleasant young lady behind the counter said, "You're just in time - we're just about sold out, and our delivery hasn't gotten here yet."  Apparently, Big N' Toasties are hugely popular, with many DD locations running out of them long before the morning rush is over. Looking at DD's promotional photo, it's easy to see why the sandwich is making such a splash - the A La Carte blog at CTnow.com remarked that with it's big golden slices of Texas Toast and stylized arrangement of bacon and cheese, the Big N' Toasty looked more like an offering from the Sonic menu than something available at Dunkies (home of the flavorless and remarkably unsatisfying egg-white flatbread sandwiches.)

That the actual sandwich doesn't quite live up to the gorgeously styled publicity shots isn't a big surprise - the meme of "fast food not looking like the ads" has been done to death and it's not even blogworthy anymore - but for all the petty differences, this is actually a fairly hearty but not at all overwhelming breakfast. Two small eggs over hard, four short strips of decent bacon, a slice of standard-issue Fast Food Orange Cheese and, of course, two thick slices of Texas Toast. If I were to have a quibble at all, it would be about the size of the "four strips" of bacon, which are really more like two strips cut in half.

Seriously, the promos and the media hype around the Big N' Toasty made me anticipate a sandwich so big that I thought I might be better off sharing it with someone. But the actual sandwich isn't anywhere near the massive OMG BREAKFAST FEAST I was led to expect. Rather, it was much more an appropriately-sized brekkie which is approximately the same size as one I'd be likely to eat on a weekend morning (egg, toast, couple strips of bacon.)  The difference here is that the toast is somewhat thicker and the eggs somewhat smaller than what I'd make at home.

No, really, the eggs are small. Look how thin they are, stacked on one another in this cross section.  Even the yolks are thin.  You know what?  With their perfectly-circlular eggs featuring perfectly-centered yolks and perfectly uniform thickness, it would not surprise me one bit if Dunkie's isn't using real cracked-from-the-shell eggs at all, but a factory-extruded egg product, pre-cooked in cylinders and then cut into uniform slices for reheating at point of sale. No shit, that is an actual food service item.  Why has no one else noticed this?? And as long as I'm asking rhetorical questions:  How is Dunkin' Donuts managing to fit 580 calories into this sandwich?

So, bottom line:  Weird eggs notwithstanding, a decent breakfast at a fair price, and it held me over well until lunch. Dunkin' Donuts might be onto something here.

Regarding Cheerios

Back when I was a kid, Cheerios were these little rings that tasted like they were made out of cardboard. People used to feed them to infants, apparently because not only are toddlers fascinated by them, but little cardboardy rings are hard for them to choke on.

Nowadays, Cheerios are still sold to people who want edible entertainment for their small children. But they are also sold to aging people as some sort of cardiac tonic, General Mills having managed to convince people that eating cereal and milk will cleanse their arteries of cholesterol.  I think it has something to do with "sympathetic magic."  The little rings represent cross-sections of unclogged arteries, and their powerful juju keeps the user healthy or something.

Anyway, in an effort to wring every last possible dollar out of an aging brand, General Mills has been introducing new Cheerios flavors willy-nilly.  I've tried them all, and even though I don't believe in magic, I have to admit that they taste good - even the ones that seem like knock-offs of competitors' products.  There are currently twelve varieties of Cheerios, two of which are Banana Nut and Chocolate.

And that is what this post is about: while Banana Nut and Chocolate Cheerios are individually pretty damn good, when they are mixed together in the bowl they are AWESOME.

Better Oats Oatmeal

I've said it before: I am not really all that fond of oatmeal. When I was a kid, my mother would sometimes make oatmeal for breakfast for us - based on the theory, I guess, that thick gummy porridge-like sludge was Good For You and would Start Your Day Off Right.  Euurgh.  Until a few years ago, I had no use for the stuff except for making oatmeal-raisin cookies.

After I was married, I discovered with horror that Maryanne actually liked oatmeal for breakfast.  Luckily, she didn't  prepare it using the "thick lumpen mass" method my mother was fond of, and over the course of several years I learned to tolerate (though never really enjoy) the groaty gruel.

Until McDonald's came out with their Fruit & Maple Oatmeal, I never thought the stuff could be actually enjoyable. But if nothing else, Micky D's made me realize that a good-quality flavored oatmeal might be more than just tolerable.

And that brings me to the subject of today's review, Better Oats Oatmeal. A relatively new product, the family of oatmeal brands under the Better Oats umbrella caught my eye in the store mostly because of the huge variety of flavor and "mixture" choices available.  Better Oats has oatmeal aimed directly at kids, for example, with their Oat Heads brand (which, by the way, is totally delicious - never thought I'd hear myself saying that) and their Abundance brand, with other whole grains including flax seed, appealing to very health-conscious people.  

There are so many varieties, in fact, that I found it impossible to buy every single variety available.  So, I gathered up a huge armload of varieties I thought would appeal to me and the family and just bought those. I bought something like fifteen boxes of oatmeal (not all of them would fit in the picture above.) For the most part, I was not disappointed.

Before I talk about the various flavors, let me tell you about Better Oats' innovative packaging.  The oats are packaged in single-serving paper pouches.  Each pouch also serves as a measuring cup for water.  Tear the pouch open, empty the oats into a bowl, then use the pouch to measure half a cup of water into the oatmeal.  Microwave the water/oat mixture for a couple minutes, and you're ready to eat.  I should add that emptying the oats into a bowl, adding half a cup of boiling water, and allowing it to sit for a couple minutes (just like making ramen!) also works just fine.  Remember to use a traditional measuring cup, though. The paper pouch doesn't work so well for boiling water.

Anyway, here I am telling you with a completely straight face and no ironic intent that Better Oats really are better oats, and if you're in the market for some pretty awesome oatmeal, I can give you a nudge and say, "Hey, how about some Better Oats?" and not be pulling your chain.

And now, on to a quick list of the flavors and varieties I have actually eaten with my own mouth, along with some quick capsule reviews:

Oat Heads: Maple Syrup and Berry Blast flavors: Funky, colorful packaging attracted me, but it was the actual oatmeal inside that got me hooked. The Maple Syrup flavor (which contains artificial as well as natural flavors) has the perfect texture and taste, just as though there was maple syrup stirred in.  And the Berry Blast contains actual dehydrated berries, not those nasty sugar-starch-flavoring balls that you get in cheap baking mixes, or dyed-and-flavored apple bits.  Both of these varieties are pre-sweetened to appeal to kids, but I didn't find them to be cloying or obnoxious. Actually, I like the berry flavors in Berry Blast so much that it's near the top of my list of favorites.

Product photos by Better Oats.

Oat Revolution Flavors: There are so many of these I can barely keep track.  I wasn't all that crazy about the "Classic" flavor, which is just unadorned oatmeal. But the fruit-flavored varieties, all of which contained real dehydrated fruit, are awesome.  My favorites include Peaches & Cream, Strawberries & Cream, Apple & Cinnamon, and Raisins & Cinnamon, and there are other varieties I haven't gotten around to trying yet, like Maple & Brown Sugar, Cinnamon Roll, and Cinnamon Spice.  I'm fairly confident that the others are going to be just as good, though.

Product photo by Better Oats

Blueberry Muffin and Maple Streusel are the flavors featured in the mmm...Muffins brand.  Both of them are excellent and favorites of Lynnafred, who said that the Blueberry Muffin version tasted just like...well...a blueberry muffin.


Product photo by Better Oats

I could go on and on about Better Oats' lineup, but I really don't have to.  It doesn't matter which one you choose, if you find a flavor that you think you're going to like, you can't lose by choosing it.  The only variety I didn't care for - out of all of the ones I tried - was Raw Pure & Simple Bare.  "Pure", "simple," and "bare" are not really descriptive of the Raw line, since a serving also includes quinoa, barley, wheat, rye, and flaxseed.  One spoonful brought me immediately back to my childhood, sitting at the breakfast table facing down a bowl of nasty oatmeal gruel, every spoonful of sludge triggering a gag reflex.  I really hate porridge and this variety is wicked porridgey.

Product photo by Better Oats

Here in the Western Massachusetts/Northern Connecticut area, you can find Better Oatmeal stuff at many Target and Stop & Shop stores. You can also visit their website and use the provided "store finder" to locate a place near you that sells it.

Link:

Better Oats website

McDonald's New Fruit & Maple Oatmeal

I'll be honest:  Oatmeal is not my favorite food.  When I was a kid and my mother used to make oatmeal for breakfast, it had the magic power to turn my stomach on the second spoonful.

These days, oatmeal seems to have developed other magic powers, like doing good stuff to one's cholesterol levels and having lots of fiber so you can live the American dream of having bowels that move with clockwork regularity. 

I don't really care about those things, though.  As I've gotten older, I've found that I can actually enjoy oatmeal now and then, especially if it's not served in a thick, sticky, overcooked lump with milk poured over it the way my mother used to do it. 

Anyway, McDondald's sent me a few coupons for their new Fruit & Maple Oatmeal and asked me to give it a try.  I agreed because although McDonald's is making this product an all-day offering, I associate oatmeal with breakfast and McDonald's breakfasts are pretty much universally awesome.  I thought that maybe some of that awesomeness would rub off on the oatmeal, even though I wasn't very optomistic.

So, Sunday morning, my wife Maryanne and I each sat down to a serving of Fruit & Maple Oatmeal courtesy of Mickey D's.  Each cup contained a generous portion of lightly sweetened oatmeal with a touch of maple flavor, topped with brown raisins, golden raisins, diced red and green apples, and dried cranberries.  There was a generous amount of fruit - enough that we didn't need to ration it out as we ate to insure that there would be some in every bite - and the sweetness was very mild and not at all cloying.  There was just enough maple flavor to be noticeable without being overwhelming, so the overall flavor profile was exceptionally good.

I'm not sure if McDonald's is using a "cooked" oatmeal or an "instant," but in this case it didn't matter because it didn't taste like instant.  The cereal was hearty with big grains and reminded me of good steel-cut oats.  It had that familiar oatmeal texture without being lumpy or gluey.  And it was extraordinarily satisfying: the portion size was just right.

Maryanne, who is a big fan of oatmeal to begin with, loved it.  I expected that.  What I didn't expect was that I liked it too.  I went into this thinking "Eww, oatmeal" but came away with the impression that McDonald's potentially has a winning product here.  I'm not sure how many cups of oatmeal they're going to sell during traditional lunch and supper times, but at breakfast I can see this stuff being a big hit.

So here's something I never thought would happen:  I'm actually going to give a thumbs-up to oatmeal - specifically, McDonald's Fruit & Maple Oatmeal.  If you're out for a fast-food breakfast but not really up for a McMuffin (more words I never thought would flow through my pen) this might be just what you're looking for.  I'd buy it again (just don't tell my mom.)

Victory Toast!

Victory Toast!  A triumph of crispy, buttery, savory deliciousness the ingredients for which snatch value from the jaws of wastefulness!  VICTORY TOAST!!

Okay, so I admit that's pretty lame, but I couldn't think of anything really catchy this morning, so we're stuck with it.

Anyway, remember back in May, when I reviewed Kraft Spaghetti Classics - that nasty quasi-Italian crap-in-a-box which has remained unchanged for 50 years?  I still had a couple of boxes of it laying around the pantry and they needed to be used up. I boiled up the nasty grey non-semolina spaghetti for the dogs - both of them love pasta and sauce - but that still left me with strange Kraft "seasoning" and two pouches of Kraft Parmesan cheese.

So I made the best of it.  

Victory Toast

Sliced ciabatta bread

Butter

Kraft Spaghetti Classics Seasoning Pouch

Kraft Grated Parmesan Cheese

Lightly butter both sides of each slice of bread.  In a skillet over medium heat, grill one side of the bread just until it begins to turn golden brown - don't let it toast completely.  Turn the bread so the other side can grill, and sprinkle the lightly brown face-up side with Kraft Spaghetti Classics Seasoning to taste.  Then sprinkle it with Kraft Grated Parmesan Cheese.  When the skillet side of the bread is nicely browned, flip the toast over again and grill the cheese side briefly, just long enough to toast the cheese.  Kraft's pouched Parmesan cheese is so low in moisture you won;t have to worry about it scorching and burning as long as you're reasonably careful.  Serve hot and crispy!

Feel free to improve this recipe by substituting your favorite Italian seasoning blend and freshly grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese.

Kellogg's Special K Red Berries

As a feature publisher for Foodbuzz, I participate in the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program, through which I'm occasionally sent samples of products to review.  Such was the case recently with Kellogg's Special K Red Berries cereal - Kellog's sent along two boxes of the cereal and asked that I try it out and let everyone know what I thought of it.

Maryanne, Lynnafred, and I all enjoy various cold cereals regardless of the time of year, so the Special K was a nice treat.  All of us liked the crunch and the sweet-tartness of the dehydrated strawberries that were sprinkled throughout the mix. Kellogg's is making a big deal of the nice big dose of fiber in every serving, which is hardly surprising since they've been emphasizing the healthy stool-moving qualities of dietary fiber for about a hundred years now, but when we buy a cereal we don't do it based on whether or not it will help us take a big healthy dump.  No, we look at these qualities:

• Is it delicious?
• Will it stay relatively crispy after the milk is poured?
• Will it carry us over for the six-plus hours from breakfast to lunch?

I'm happy to say that  Special K Red Berries succeeds on all three counts.

• It is delicious. The rice and wheat blend is quite tasty.and these grains are helped along by the generous amount of sugar (third on the ingredient list, just behind the rice and wheat) and seemingly-mandatory dollop of high-fructose corn syrup.  Even fans of Cap'n Crunch should need no added sugar to enjoy Red Berries.
• We noticed the Special K Red Berries cereal resisted sogginess somewhat better than the usual cereal flakes.  The red berries, however, delighted in soaking up milk to create soft, flavorful (and quite milky) berries.
• Special K Red Berries did a bang-up job of suppressing The Hungries all morning long.

Good stuff, and worth an addition to the morning lineup as long as you remember that these aren't in the same league as plain corn flakes or Cheerios.  I consider Special K Red Berries to be a "sugar cereal," and enjoy it as an occasional "treat" breakfast.
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A Cheap Bastard (Me) Goes To McDonalds

I have never made a secret of my appreciation for McDonald's Sausage McMuffin With Egg.  It is the pinnacle of breakfast sandwich creation.  Say what you will about Mickey D's horrible, fatty, unhealthy menu (which, let's face it, is most of it) the Sausage McMuffin With Egg is a good choice to start the day:  It's a simple and decent breakfast in sandwich form, and when you break it down into components - 1 egg, 1 sausage patty, an English muffin, and a single slice of cheese - it's a fairly normal breakfast, not that much different than you'd make for yourself on a weekend morning.

Even so, I don't indulge in them very often.  Partly this is because I can't really burn off breakfast by sitting in an office for eight hours.  But partly, it's because I really don't want to spend $3.50 or so to buy an egg, a sausage patty, and an English muffin.  You see, I can be a Cheap Bastard.

But you know what?  Thanks to McDonald's dollar breakfast menu, I can enjoy a Sausage McMuffin with Egg while still being a Cheap Bastard.  Check it out - breakfast for me and a friend at work for about $2.25:

Here are two Sausage McMuffins - English muffin, sausage patty, and cheese.  They're on the dollar breakfast menu.  I picked them up on my way to work.

Here are two eggs, fried in rings for the proper size and shape, which I made at home before leaving for work.  They cost about ten cents each.

And here are the Sausage McMuffins set with the homemade eggs, turning them instantly into Sausage McMuffins With Egg.  Total cost each:  $1.10 (compared to the full menu price of $3.50 each.)

Oh, and Ronald McDonald, if you're listening:  I would never have even thought of doing this if you hadn't tried to charge me $2.50 for a fried egg, you greedy facepainted freak.

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Burger King Breakfast Muffin VS. McDonald's Sausage Mc Muffin with Egg

You've probably seen the new Burger King ad, where a cleverly disguised Burger King breaks into McDonald's HQ to steal the Top Secret Blueprints for the Sausage McMuffin With Egg:

I gotta hand it to Burger King:  Taking on McDonald's at breakfast time is a bold move; the Egg McMuffin practically created the "breakfast sandwich" fast food category.  And I love the way they just outright admit they're copying McDonald's creation.

The real question, though, is How well does the BK Breakfast Muffin Sandwich stack up against McDonald's Sausage McMuffin With Egg? 

Right out of the wraps, some of the differences between the Sausage McMuffin with Egg and the Breakfast Muffin Sandwich are evident.  Size, for one thing.  Texture as well - the BK version is built on a softer and somewhat fresher-tasting English muffin than the McD's variety.  Let's check them out individually, starting with the McDonald's sandwich:

McDonald's always uses fresh whole eggs for their Sausage McMuffins With Egg, fried in an egg ring to conform to the proper size, and cooked long enough to solidify the yolk.  This is important not only because runny yolks skeeve some people out, but because it would be pretty damn inconvenient to have yolk running all over your hands, face, and shirt while you're eating a sandwich in the car on your way to work.  The sausage patty is one of the best in the business, with a near-perfect balance of meat and fat, and an excellent spice blend.  The cheese is standard McDonald's burger cheese, which is a mild American-style cheddar made under contract for them by Kraft (it's very similar to the Old English Brand slices Kraft used to make, but which is no longer on the market.)  And, of course, there's the muffin, which in my opinion is somehat under-toasted, raw-tasting, and a little tough.  Even though I think the way Mickey D's prepares the muffin is the weakest part of this sandwich, I still consider the Sausage McMuffin With Egg to be the pinnacle of breakfast sandwiches - McDonald's has made it possible to eat a good solid breakfast (egg, meat, toast) on the go by ingeniously combining them into the perfect handheld breakfast.

Burger King's Breakfast Muffin is an obvious (and obviously inferior) knock-off.  Instead of a fresh egg, BK uses a thin square of highly-processed scrambled egg which doesn't even come close to the weight or volume of a whole egg.  The sausage patty is the same size as McDonald's, but it's wetter and spongier in texture, greasier, and much milder in flavor.  The muffin I got the day I sampled these was thin and kind of roughly cut, but it was much fresher-tasting and softer than the McMuffin (though it was still inadequately toasted/grilled for my taste.  The cheese really doesn't deserve comment, because it is nearly identical to the McDonald's stuff.

Burger King is selling their version for $1.00.  In my opinion, the price is about right for what you're getting - the sausage is acceptable but inferior and the egg is downright lousy - and I wouldn't pay so much as a dime more for it.  Burger King's actual burgers are much, much better than McDonald's, but when it comes to breakfast, McD's still rules the roost.

My French Toast! IT'S A MIRACLE!!

OMG, MY FRENCH TOAST TOTALLY HAS A FACE ON IT!! CALL THE NEWSPAPERS!! Better yet, call Golden Palace Casino, those guys who bought the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich and talked this poor benighted idiot into tattooing her forehead. Check out the center of this slice of delicious Frfench toast:

Trouble is, I can't quite figure out exactly who has appeared uninvited at the breakfast table. He's too fat to be Jesus, and Elvis didn't have a beard. Top contenders:

• Orson Welles
  
  
• Billy Mays
  
  
• Ulysses S Grant
  
  
• Bluto
  
  
• Robert Blake

So...what do you think?

Links:


Pareidolia is the phenomenon by which humans tend to recognize familiar patterns - faces, animals, speech, and so on - in random stimulae. Simply put, our brains are hard-wired to find recognizable images amongst noise. This is especially true of recognizing faces, which is a skill acquired very early in infancy. For more information about pareidolia, and why a grilled-cheese sandwich isn't really a manifestation of the Holy Mother, you can check Wikipedia and The Skeptic's Dictionary, or you can simply Google the term pareidolia.

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Spockwaffles!

What could this be? An Eggo/Star Trek promotional tie-in? It's a good thing that I'm not one of those compulsive hoarders. These are Limited Edition Eggos and must be retained for all time for their collector's value. And yet...delicious waffles... I could see how the intense emotional conflict could bring about a mental "divide by zero" error and make heads asplode.

Did I mention that pictures of Mr. Spock figure prominently on these bitchin' Star Trek Eggos? That makes them...

S P O C K W A F F L E S !

Try saying that three times fast: "Spockwaffles. Spockwaffles. Spockwaffles. " I can't do it; I mess up on the "waffles" part every time.

Anyway, Spockwaffles don't taste any better or worse than regular Eggos, and they're not any more expensive than regular Eggos, but they are undeniably cooler than regular Eggos by virtue of having Spock on some of them.

OM NOM NOM. "Brain and brain!! What is brain??"


Link:

Kellogg's website.

Taylor Pork Roll

I was in the ShopRite supermarket in Manchester CT over the weekend, and look what I found! Taylor Pork Rolls! This is a rare treat up here in Northern Connecticut, though ShopRite (headquartered in Elizabeth NJ) would certainly be the place to look for one.

You see, pork roll is a New Jersey specialty, and one that's not found so much of a following outside the NJ/NYC/Philly area. That's a shame, because it's pretty damned awesome. Especially the John Taylor brand. Taylor invented the pork roll in the 1880's. He was a Trenton NJ wholesale grocer who got into the pork and beef packing business and founded Taylor Provision Co. Several other companies make pork roll nowadays but my favorite is the original Taylor Pork Roll - still made after 120-some-odd years by Taylor Provision in Trenton.

It's hard to describe pork roll. It's a kind of chopped and cured pork product, stuffed into cylindrical cotton bags for easy slicing; beyond that it gets difficult. Although the texture somewhat resembles SPAM, pork roll is firmer and less fatty. Pork roll's lactic acid cure makes it taste something like an unseasoned Genoa salami (but much less intense because salami's long curing time makes it much firmer than pork roll.)

The best way to cook it is just to slice it, (as thick or thin as you like it) right through the cotton casing, then peel the cotton off and fry it up. In Joisey they cut little 3/4-inch slits in from the edges to keep the slices from curling into little "cups" as it fries. I just stuck the slices under a bacon press to keep them flat and it seemed to work okay.

Serve your fried pork roll slices alongside eggs, toast, and home fried potatoes. The stuff is great - miles better than fried SPAM, which is not only greasier, but saltier and not as good-tasting.

For a classic "Jersey Breakfast," put slices of pork roll on a hard roll with egg and cheese. Delicious and satisfying.

Links:

I'd love to give Taylor Provisions a link here, but as far as I can tell, they don't have a website. The best I can do is send you over to Jersey Pork Roll, where you can check out Taylor Pork Roll and other NJ edibles. It's always best to see if you can find it locally first, though.

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Breakfast Sandwich Cage Match: McDonald's vs. 7-11

Most weekdays, I haven't got the time to make a real breakfast at home, so I usually have toast spread with some labneh and a touch of jam. Occasionally for a treat I'll stop at McDonald's on my way to work and buy a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, which is the Emperor of all fast food breakfast sandwiches.

This morning was hectic. I was running late and didn't have the time even for my usual toast, and McDonald's was insanely crowded with long lines both inside and at the drive-through. So I stopped at the much-less-crowded 7-11 a mile down the road instead. 7-11's coffee is aces, and I thought at the very least I could grab a coffee and maybe a bag of popcorn or something to hold me over until lunch.

In the center of the coffee service island, though, there was a warming oven filled with various breakfast sandwiches. Cool, thought I; I wouldn't have to skip breakfast after all. I selected a Fresh To Go Sausage Egg and Cheese on an English Muffin sandwich and was soon on my way to work.

The Comparison:

Freshness: 7-11 is a convenience store, not a restaurant, and they bring their breakfast sandwiches in to be reheated and held at serving temperature until purchased. Because of this, they just can't taste as fresh as a McDonald's McMuffin, which is made to order. So as far as "freshness" goes, I simply accept that 7-11's product starts off with an obvious handicap and take it from there. No points awarded.

English muffin: McDonald's toasts or grills theirs, however minimally. That bit of golden toastiness goes a long way toward flavor, though, and 7-11's muffins still have that "raw" flavor that untoasted muffins exhibit. +1 McD.

Cheese: 7-11's cheese is strange and plasticy, with an artificial taste and a strange slippery texture. Reminds me of Cheese Wiz or Velveeta, neither of which are in my Top One Million Foods list. McDonald's uses straightforward orange Kraft American Cheese produced for them under contract. +1 McD.

Egg: The cooked eggs are the same diameter, cooked to the same degree of doneness, and have the same fresh eggy flavor. The only difference I can see is that the 7-11 egg is thinner. Maybe they're using smaller eggs? +1 McD, +1 7-11 (tie.)

Sausage: McDonald's sausage is a nearly perfect blend of herbs, spice, meaty flavor, and salt. If I could buy it in the store in bulk, I would, because it's just that awesome. 7-11's sausage has a very good texture, not quite as salty as I expected it, and a strong cayenne pepper presence. Spicier than McDonald's, but not as well-balanced a flavor. Thing is, it works in context. Although I wouldn't buy 7-11's sausage for its own sake, it's quite enjoyable on the sandwich. +1 McD, +1 7-11 (a tie.)

The score:

McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg: 4/5
7-11's Fresh To Go Sausage Egg and Cheese on an English Muffin: 2/5

McDonald's wins by a decision.

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