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.)

The Fire Goes Out at Backyard BBQ in Enfield

Back in April 2010, I wrote about a brand new barbecue place that had opened up in my hometown.  It was called Backyard BBQ.  Their pulled pork was outstanding, and they also made the best barbecue baked beans anywhere, hands down.

Unfortunately, I headed that way last week - just before Christmas - to find the store dark with a sign in the window reading:

"To all our loyal customers! We are closing due to economic hardship. Thank you so much for supporting our business, and hopefully we can open up again when the market gets better."

Bummer.

Backyard BBQ had attracted some decent attention in the press.  Reviews in both the Hartford Courant and the Hartford Advocate were generally positive, and by the end of summer they seemed to be fairly busy.  I guess looks aren't everything, though.  I'm sorry to see them go.

OMG IT'S SNOWING, GET TO T3H SUPERMARKET

There's a winter storm on the way.  The National Weather Service says we should see maybe a foot of snow before it's all over.  Not too shabby.  Twelve inches of snow makes for a little inconvenience  in the way of shoveling and so on, but the temperature is cold enough that the snow should be powdery and easy to move.  However it works out, I'm not about to worry about it.

Plenty of people are worried about it, though, driven by hyperbolic "meteorologists" on local TV news stations that pump people into a panic to keep them glued to the newscasts (and the newscast's advertisements.)  I decided to check out the local Stop & Shop and see what was selling in advance of the storm.

O noes, better fill up that gas tank!  You never know when the town will get around to plowing the streets.  Don't want to get caught snowed in with an empty tank!  Every single pump had a five-car line.

Where's all the bread go?

Sorry We are out of Eggs

There was a run on ground beef.

Here's something I never figured would be rushed because of snow:  Cat food.

Oddly enough, there was plenty of milk - but the half-and-half and coffee creamer was decimated, and the bottled water aisle was hit heavily but not cleaned out.

It's been more than thirty years since a winter storm caused Connecticut to shut down, and that was in the days before so many people owned front-wheel drive and 4WD SUVs.  Yet, whenever a snowstorm starts sniffing around New England, we get panic buying like this.  *sigh*

Horse Cookies

Maryanne and I give a lot of gifts from our kitchen, as you might imagine.  We spend time during the year making jams, preserves, and jellies from seasonal fruits, and we do a fair amount of pickling and preserving the vegetables we grow.  And then, of course, there's the holiday baking - cookies, breads, pies and so on.  For the past few days, I've been baking cookies...but not for the people on our list.  No, this time around we decided to bake cookies for the various animals in the family.  I'll be sharing my recipes for animal treats here over the coming week, and today we'll start with horse cookies.

One of my sisters has a couple of horses and I thought it would be kind of cool to come up with something they'd enjoy.  Horses like sweet and chewy treats - one of their favorites is big, sweet oversized carrots - so I wanted to come up with something the horses would love and that my sister could carry in her pocket out to the barn.  I came up with this recipe, which horses really do seem to love.

Horse Cookies
Makes about 3 dozen 2-inch treats

4 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for kneading
3 cups uncooked quick oats
¼ cup brown sugar
1 egg
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup molasses
1 cup applesauce
¾ cup apple cider (approximately)

Preheat your oven to 300 F.

Stir the flour and oats together with the brown sugar in a large bowl.  Whisk together the egg, oil, molasses and applesauce until well combined, then dump the mixture into the flour and oats and work it in with a strong wooden spoon.  Gradually add cider, kneading it in to make a rather sticky dough.

Turn out the dough onto a heavily-floured surface (I used whole wheat flour for this, too) and knead for several minutes, adding flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking too much to your hands and the surface, until the dough is stiff, somewhat tacky, and easy to form.  This can take half a cup or more of additional flour.

Roll the dough out approximately half an inch thick and cut into cookies with a 2-inch round biscuit cutter.   Scraps should be briefly kneaded into a solid mass, then rerolled and cut.  Arrange the cookies on baking sheets prepared either by greasing them or by lining them with baking parchment.  Bake for 1 hour at 300 F, then shut the oven off and leave the cookies on the pans in the oven as it cools for several hours to help dry them out.

When the cookies are completely cooled, they can be stored in an airtight container to use as needed.

I sampled one of them after the initial baking and before the drying time, and they're pretty tasty (though not exactly my idea of a snack, my sister's horses are going to love them.)

Wendy's Natural-Cut Fries with Sea Salt

So, Wendy's is rolling out this "new style" of french fries which they're calling "Natural Cut Fries With Sea Salt."  Russet spuds, peels left on, shoestring cut (fairly standard "Boardwalk Fries" if you know what I mean) sprinkled with "sea salt" as if that's going to make a big flavor difference on a handful of greasy fried taters.

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that the new fries aren't any better - or even substantially different - than any other burger joint fries.  They're okay thirty seconds out of the fryer and they go downhill fast from there, at first getting kind of soggy in their own steam and then just getting tough and cold and nasty when the heat leaves.  Hey, even McDonald's fries - supposedly the industry leader - suck when they get cold.  Wendy's fries are going to continue to run a distant third in the Fast Food Wars, if only because they don't have to get cold all the way through before they suck.

I really don't understand what the hell Wendy's was thinking here.  What was so wrong with their fries the way they were?  I've never heard anyone ever complain about them, so it isn't like there was some huge public outcry to have a "new improved" fried potato on the menu.  Won't surprise me a bit if regular Wendy's customers raise hell about these new fries, though.

Free Coffee at Pride Gas Stations

This post is mostly going to be of interest to my home-turf readers in the Western Mass / Northern CT area.  Pride is a small (16 store) chain of locally-owned gas stations in Western Massachusetts and during the month of December, they're trying to drum up a little more business by offering free 16-ounce cups of coffee - no purchase required - at all of their stations.

Thursday night was one of those really trying nights.  I had come home from work to find the distribution blower in my pellet stove had stopped working and the house temp was in the low 50's  The service center that handles warranty work on my stove closes at 7 pm on Thursday, so I got right to work removing the old blower so I could swap it out for a new one.  By the time I got to the service center it was 15 minutes before closing, but I got the part I needed.  It was 7F/14C outside, I still had to stop at the hardware store for electrical connectors and foil tape to finish the repairs, and my car's gas tank was just about empty.

Pride to the rescue!  Cheapest gas in town and free hot fresh coffee.  Totally awesome.

Well, not totally to the rescue.  I still had to get home and install the blower.

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.

More Ridiculous Hanukkah Advertising

Stop & Shop says Happy Chanukah!  Celebrate by cooking a delicious fresh pork shoulder, on sale now for just 99 cents a pound!

Domo Toys At Taco Bell!

ど―も!

Taco Bell kids' meals currently include one of five toys featuring Domo-Kun.  How cool is that??  Personally, I'd go for the sticker dispenser.

Southgate Beef Stew

I bought this at Dollar Tree as one of those "what the hell" purchases.  Lynnafred and I were ther to buy some cheap holiday-themed paper dessert plates (which were out of stock) and on our way out Southgate Beef Stew caught my eye.  Despite her protests - "Damn it, Dad, you and your crappy dollar store food!" - the label promised beef stew with textured vegetable protein added, and the ingredients panel seemed pretty straightforward:  Water, beef, potatoes, carrots, TVP, modified food starch, tomato paste, dehydrated celery and onion, sugar, caramel powder, paprika, black pepper, celery seed.  Nothing really outrageous there.  My expectations were actually pretty low, so I wouldn't be very easy to disappoint, you know?

And therefore, I was pleasantly surprised by how decent Southgate Beef Stew is considering that it's a canned beef stew.  Big hearty chunks of potato and a fair quantity of beef.  Real beef in chunks of various size, and by "real" I mean that it isn't some sort of bastardized loaf product made of beef and TVP mixed up, cooked, and cut in blocks for the stew.  The TVP was there, but separately, in little hamburger-like crumbles of their own, not trying at all to convince you that it was anything but crumbly TVP bits.  The gravy was also good, too.  Only a little hint of grease, not too salty with a beefy flavor and a hint of tomato and carrot, just like you'd get if you made your own.

All told, it was a pretty solid and satisfying lunch and a good deal for a buck.

Info and Link:

The Southgate brand is one of a number of brands produced by Choice Food of America, a company which has gathered many small labels and their recipes under a single corporate umbrella.  They produce and pack their own product rather than contracting it out to other companies and they're proud enough of what they make to put their name and address prominently on each label. I'm obsessive about reading labels and you'd be surprised how many times I've had to search the fine print on some brands to get a mailing address - some companies make it as difficult as possible to find out who's responsible for getting that can or box onto the supermarket shelf.  I've emailed Choice Foods to find out more about them and the brands they market, and hope to be able to write more about them in the future.