Has anyone had a food flop this week? Something they purchased or made and just really did not care for? How about something you really enjoyed?
I was really looking forward to eating and making the Hungry Girl's onion rings. I looooove onion rings and they get rave reviews on her site. So, I was very disappointed when I eagerly bit into one straight out of the oven and found them to be very unappetizing. On the upside, everyone else in the family really liked them.
I also tried the Jimmy Dean Delights breakfast sandwiches on the advice of some random guy in the grocery store. Another fail for me, but on the upside I choked it down (once and only once) and felt really full and satisfied for hours.
I tried the Fiber One PB and chocolate bars, and those were very good, good thing since I bought a Costco-sized box! LOL I would say my favorite food of the week has been Fage with a tsp of brown sugar and apples, pears, or cherries for dipping.
I made something last night that everyone enjoyed, that sounds yucky! Tortilla pizza's with spinach and cheese. They were surprisingly tasty and even the kids loved them. My SO was not overly impressed, but managed to choke down 3 of them anyway I was just trying to jazz up my spinach!
Yesterday I went out to lunch to an awesome place called Beautifull and had the kale salad. They didn't clean it well enough and it crunched with sand ewwwwwwwww. I was very disappointed when they told me they had been getting a lot of complaints about it this week. DUH take it off the menu!
Other than that, I have had a good week of home cooked meals (mostly polishing off a huge cauldron of veggie soup I had made over the weekend) and one so-so frozen meal by Amy's Organics, but I don't expect much from frozen dinners - nothing beats fresh homemade!
Ive made the HG onion rings before, and I had to REALLY season them up. Like, more seasoning than I would normally use, and I use a lot of spices. HTH!
My DH loves them, we make them now about 2-3 times a month.
Ive made the HG onion rings before, and I had to REALLY season them up. Like, more seasoning than I would normally use, and I use a lot of spices. HTH!>>>>
I used at least twice as much seasoning as the recipe called for. I still felt like they tasted like onion rings coated in tree bark LOL I was glad that everyone else liked them, so they didn't go to waste.
aww man. I LOVE Jimmy Dean Delights! The turkey sausage ones are amazing.>>>>
You know, I do not care for eggs unless I am really in the mood, and I do not much care for sausage patties, so I have no clue why I bought TWO boxes of these other than I was looking for something hot for breakfast that would keep me feeling satisfied.
I'm finding rice to be great but I can't get it right. First it was too bland, now it's too spicy. I guess spicy is okay because it allegedly revs up your metabolism. Now I have some beans to add to the rice, should be interesting. They are Bush's chili beans. It's gonna be great or kill me with spice.
We're definitely not vegan or vegetarian, but working under the theory that this "cheese" could aid in our quest to develop a lower calorie yet delicious pizza, we decided to give it a shot. Had to sub in Soy Creamer for that elusive Mimicreme.
It turned out...like a stiff soy Jello. Lovely. My hopes were dashed.
But wait! A commenter says that it is supposed to seem like stiff soy jello! So, despite the fact that it tasted funky (we used a salt alternative...bad move. Real salt would've helped the flavor be more cheeselike), we shredded it up (it looked good, if not a bit damp), scattered it over the pizza, and baked it...
...and it didn't melt.
Between that and the crappy tube crust, pizza was a fail. Incredibly bland, to the point where I was tempted to put ketchup on it. Yeah, that bad.
We'll try this again. I'm thinking that if we use real salt, and don't use it as the only cheese (so, use it to hold on the veggies, sprinkle a little extra, different cheese on for flavor), it may still serve a purpose.
I decided to try to make my own Sugar Free Lime flavoring, because I can't find the Torani's lime syrup.
I've used extracts before as beverage flavorings, and from what I read online the candy oils are 4 times stronger than extracts. So I poured about 1/3 of a bottle of LorAnn's Gourmet lime oil (for candymaking, the bottle is so tiny there's probably only a teaspoon in the whole bottle) into the Torani bottle and filled it with water.
When I added about an ounce of the mixture to club soda instead of tasting nicely of lime, it was so strong it tasted like cleaning fluid.
Turns out this stuff isn't 4X as strong as an extract, it's about 400X as strong. I probably should have stuck to what I had been doing (just barely touching a toothpick to oil and stirring the beverage with the toothopick).
I am laughing aloud at how nice that vegan version of mozzarella looks in that link and comparing it to your description. Poor ArcticFrogs, must've felt like Charlie Brown did after getting a rock in his bag of Halloween candy.
I've resigned myself to real cheese and damn the calories when it comes to pizza. A little of the good stuff seems to work better than a lot of the not-so-good stuff.
Food flop of the week for me: lady apples. Oh, sure, they look cute and they have an illustrious heirloom history, but they just plain don't taste all that good to me. Plus, eating tiny apples makes me feel like I have giant hairy-knuckled man-hands (my knuckles aren't actually hairy, that's just hyperbole).
Food find: Amy's palak paneer. I don't eat a lot of frozen food, but the last couple of days have been really stressful and it was a relief to have at least one meal that was no-fuss. Surprisingly tasty for frozen stuff and surprisingly filling for 300 calories.
So, I saved my calories and ate amazingly healthy on Wednesday so I could go to this cupcake store. BF and I were having a lovely date night for our anniversary and we went to an amazing restaurant for dinner (where I controlled my eating for this cupcake).
We arrive at the cupcake place and the owner tells us that she hasn't baked a cupcake since that morning because they are preparing to launch a new product. So, she only has these cupcakes she baked at 6 AM and have been sitting out for the last 12 hours. With not a lot of options.
I selected a plain vanilla cupcake, because it was a flavor that I liked, and BF selects a brownie.
I bite into this really small cupcake (but if it's great, size doesn't matter!) and..........
........ it tasted like the cupcakes that my local grocery store makes. Even the frosting was the same.
In the meantime the owner tells us that we can try a second cupcake for free because she's closing up and the cupcakes are just going to get thrown away. So, I think to myself, why not, maybe it was just the plain vanilla that was the issue. So, I select a lemon one and bite into it.
Ugh, it was disgusting. I couldn't finish it. I threw it away and we left the store.
The brownie wasn't any better.
That was a major food flop.
Food fan was the sweetest thing the BF did the next day. Knowing that we had such a bad cupcake experience, he went to Au Bon Pain and picked up 2 of their gourmet cupcakes and THOSE were absolutely delicious and worth every calorie (330 each).
Food fan.
It only happens once in a while, but if it's going to happen, it better be good.
I am laughing aloud at how nice that vegan version of mozzarella looks in that link and comparing it to your description. Poor ArcticFrogs, must've felt like Charlie Brown did after getting a rock in his bag of Halloween candy.
I've resigned myself to real cheese and damn the calories when it comes to pizza. A little of the good stuff seems to work better than a lot of the not-so-good stuff.
...
Food flop of the week for me: ...eating tiny apples makes me feel like I have giant hairy-knuckled man-hands (my knuckles aren't actually hairy, that's just hyperbole).
First...doesn't that cheese look awesome?
Ours looked like hard tofu jello in the pan (as in, I was tempted to see if it would bounce off of the wall), then resembled cheese again when we took it out and shredded it, and then resembled globs of not-so-hard-anymore tofu jello when it came out of the oven. Oh, the roller-coaster of emotions.
Fickle b!tch wannabe cheese product. *mumbles*
Second...I saw some of those little apples the other day and was overwhelmed by the NEED to tear open the bag, thunder "HULK SMASH" and attempt to crush one in my hand. I had to walk away, and was distracted by that mental image/curiosity for the rest of our time in that store.
Last (and to prove that I'm not hijacking your thread, OP), a find: Turkey Burgers
While the online content says 180 (our box says 160)...these are pretty damn tasty, and have a great texture/thickness for that craving that usually only a burger can satisfy. Put one of these on a sandwich thin and pile it up with veggies...it's a huge sandwich for less than 300 calories.
We can get them at our Sam's Club up here for about $15/dozen, which does make the meat a bit pricey compared to others...but, considering that we've been hesitant to try ground turkey, combined with the sheer convenience of these things...might be worth a shot for anyone looking for a burger alternative.
I didn't really have any food flops this week, if you don't count my accidentally knocking over the pumpkin pie spice into my oatmeal. It wasn't terrible, exactly, but it wasn't the tastiest thing I've ever eaten.
Two new things I tried and liked, though. The first is tofu shiratake. Apparently people either love them or hate them. I liked them fine, but I do love that I could eat a whole package for 40 calories. So they're going on the rotation.
The other new thing I had (and you can feel free to laugh) - kiwis! So stinkin' tasty! Why did I wait so long to discover this little guy?
Flop - I mixed in a whole egg with my regular egg whites I eat most days. I've always said I don't like yolks but couldn't actually remember trying them. Urgh...tasted funny. Still finished it, but won't be repeated.
Fan - I found Torani sugar free syrups. Yummy! Vanilla and irish cream for my coffee, and oddly enough peppermint for my cocoa powder oatmeal.
Food Flop/Food Fan
I was just trying to jazz up my spinach!
HTH!
