The KFC Double Down

You couldn't say you didn't expect this. For those of us who have yet to have been informed, the KFC Double Down is a new bunless chicken sandwich presented by KFC. Some call it a heart attack, others call the paramedics, regardless it is the ultimate sandwich, in my professional opinion. (Yes I'm a prefessional. I'm paid in the laughter and smiles on delighted childrens faces when they read my blog.) This baby is a whopping two pieces of bacon smothered in the Colonel's special sauce that's pressed between two pieces of cheese (Monterey Jack and pepper jack) all smushed between two (have you caught on to the double concept?) pieces of chicken on either side. This bad boy comes in the traditional fried chicken or for the healthier, lamer food connoisseur there's the grilled chicken version. If you're looking to eating this sandwich you're looking at 540 fried calories or 460 grilled calories. Either 32 fried grams of fat or 23 grilled grams of fat. And lastly, 1380 grams of tasty fried sodium or 1430 of lame grilled sodium. I suggest that only healthy people with healthy arteries eat this meal because it might be your last otherwise. Don't believe my nutrition info? Read it and weep, my friends, read it and weep.

Being the awesome people my boyfriend and I are we recreated this sandwich. (This is also partly due to the fact that we couldn't find a ride to KFC on Friday night but this was better anyways.) So we went to Publix and got the ingredients and my gift to you, I'm going to teach you how to recreate the one Amani and I made. Our ingredients did vary from the ingredients listed on this site and if you'd like to recreate the exact think then you should follow the actual site instead. We went to Publix and first sought out two fat pieces of good ol' chicken milk sacs (breasts). Then we hunted some bacon and here we used beef bacon rather than the traditional pork. We then needed cheese so we went to the deli man. He basically refused to slice us some Monterey Jack and pepper jack and forced us to buy a higher quality cheese. Then he proceeded to tell us that we sounded pathetic and how the cheese we wanted was garbage. We ended up getting Havarti and using two slices of it on each sandwich. We took the fat chicken breasts and sliced down the middle so they were thin and we fried them in a simple batter with flour, cornmeal, seasoning salt, and garlic powder. The bacon was cooked in a pan regularly. Now comes the sauce. We didn't have paprika so we used chili powder instead. Mostly mayonnaise and ketchup with some of "Frank's Red Hot Sauce" which Amani informed me is really more hot sauce than buffalo sauce. We added some garlic powder and the recently stated chili powder and then smothered it on our sandwiches. The difference between our sandwich and KFC's? Ours likely contained more nutrition. The chicken, cheese, and bacon were all of higher quality. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

Corndogs!

We all know what a corndog is, yes? For those of us who don't know, a corndog is a cor flour batter covered hotdog on a stick. A whopping 460 calories a pop. Since the corndog there have many variations of other;s take on the corndog. My personal favorite is the sausage covered in blueberry pancake batter. A breakfast essential. But this is a completely different take on things that surprised even me. It starts as a banana on a stick and it ends as a banana on a stick covered in funnel cake. And funnel cake is NOTHING without it's trusty sidekick and spice of choice, powdered sugar. I'm not going to lie, this sounds gross. Unless you drizzle some chocolate over it. That would be so delicious. Or if you took some chopped strawberries and some chopped bananas and put them on the stick together and covered them with funnel cake and topped with chocolate and some powdered sugar. Delicious!

Share your ideas for a new kind of corndog or you corndog experiences. [:

A different kind of sushi.

Holland is an interesting place. Legal marijuana, the red light district, need I say more? Well, they just got much more interesting. The Dutch have a traditional delicacy of raw herring. Herring is a fish, in case you didn't know. They eat it raw after the head's been removed and the body's been cleaned and cured with salt. They eat it with raw onion and/or pickles. It is consumed by grabbing the fish tail first and letting it slide down your mouth gradually. This fish is also consumed in sandwich form.

On the Dutch holiday of "Vlaggetjesdag" (little flag day), the first catch of the year is auctioned off for charity. The highest recorded bid was 40k euros. These first fish usually go for tens of thousands of euros.

You too can be an optimum pooper.

Today's topic: natural laxatives. Defecating is incredibly important for your body and mental health. Everybody's different so to find out how often you should be moving your bowels you can ask a gastroenterologist. Constipation is a very unfortunate thing some people have to go through some times. It is when there is a lack of bowel movements and fecal matter builds up in the intestines. This is quite obviously undesirable in a number of ways.

I'm going to help you avoid constipation. Foods that can cause constipation are ice cream, cheese, meat, snacks (chips, pizza, etc.), and processed foods (frozen mashed potatoes, frozen dinners, etc.). Understand, I am not trying to frighten you away from all of the delicious foods in my blog, constipation results when you have an excessive amount of these foods. (Imagine all the sad, lonely girls who binged on ice cream after they were dumped by the boyfriend who didn't like them in the first place. Now think about what probably happened. Best day ever, huh?) Oh, and by the way, not exercising causes constipation. So if you don't exercise you're not only in danger of gaining weight but you're prone to having some problems on the throne to your kingdom. Talk about the ultimate wimp.

If you ever do become constipated, do not drink cold beverages or eat cold foods as that slows the digestion process. (I'll write up a blog about the difference between hot and cold foods in another blog.)

Finally, we are at the part where I teach you, young grasshopper, how to become an optimum pooper. Natural fruit juices are fantastic for working your bowels. For the best results you should drink them at night or in the morning. Prune juice is popular for this as well as coconut juice. I found a site that says you should mix orange juice and olive oil or pear juice with apple juice. (Those both sound unexpectedly interesting.) More juices are apple cider vinegar juice, carrot juice, spinach juice, grapefruit juice, asparagus juice, and lemon juice and hot water. (Watch out for some of these, remember, you are what you eat and if you eat asparagus, your sweat will have an asparagus smell just like if you eat more citrus, you'll smell sweeter, but that's another blog.) Fiber is GREAT for your bowels. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts can be natural laxatives as well. I stated earlier that not exercising causes constipation, it would only be logical that exercise will create the opposite effect. Lots of water is great lubricant, as graphic as that sounds, it is. (You'll thank me when you don't get rug burn from your feces!) Basically, if you eat healthy, you poop healthy, simple as that.

A quick note

Check out my poll, it affects you. [: Potentially.

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Barbacoa

Today in class Mrs. Stoklosa asked us about food and our family and I brought up barbacoa. Max asked me what it was traditionally made out of and I told him but I didn't get to finish answering him so this blog is for Max and anyone else who was interested in barbacoa.

Where barbacoa originates is a bit fuzzy. There are some who say it originated in Mexico and others who claim it originated in Barbados. Wherever it originated, they had the right idea. I'm going to discuss the mexican style barbacoa simply because that is what I'm most familiar with. The barbacoa described today in class was barbacoa de cabeza. It is the barbequed meat from the cow head, most often the cheeks. Barbacoa can also be pork, which, at this point, is called a carnita. Barbacoa de cabeza is served more often in Texas rather than Mexico. In Mexico they make a more traditional barbacoa with, more often, lamb. It can also be made with fish, goats, chicken, and the previously stated types of barbacoa. Traditionally, you would eat barbacoa on a warm corn tortilla with some guacamole and/or salsa for added flavor.

Nowadays the term barbacoa has become a loose term for meat steamed until it is tender. I blame the whole tex-mex scene for that. Barbacoa should be kept the delectable, traditional food it is.

Growing up I ate barbacoa every Sunday from a little Mexican bakery. I did not add guacamole or salsa because the meat is delicious on it's own. If you ever go to Texas I would most definitely recommend eating some traditional barbacoa. I've also had lamb barbacoa and it was most delightful, another recommendation.

A new kind of ice cream sandwich

So I was perusing the internet when I came across quite the interesting specimen. An ice cream sandwich that instead of between cookies, it's between Poptarts. When I saw this my first instinct was to gravitate towards it because the picture was so cute and pretty but then I honestly though about it and all of the different combinations. There are close to thirty different flavors of Poptarts and countless flavors of ice cream. If a bakery or ice cream shop teamed up with Poptarts or made a Poptart from scratch and converted it into an ice cream sandwich snack, they could very easily make a fortune.

Our next Poptart creation is an "apple cranberry pie." This is an apple pie with chopped cranberries and walnuts topped with crumpled brown sugar Poptarts as a crust covering the pie. This idea also has a lot of unhealthy and perhaps disgusting potential.


Finally, we meet "PB&J banana sammies." These things seem to be one of the worst ideas. A wild grape Poptart sandwich with peanut butter and bananas inside. I like Poptarts but they've gone a bit far with their new creations. Yuck.

Cheese puffs, what are they?

Cheese puffs came about right before the 1940s and by the 1950s they were a popular American snack. The original cheese puff comes from the Flakall company that actually produced flaked grain feed for livestock. The cheese puff, like many delicious foods, was not made on purpose. Edward Wilson, the flake operator at the company noticed that workers poured moistened kernels into the machine to reduce clogging. As the flaking machine ran continuously it became heated and the moistened cornmeal came out of the machine puffy ribbons that hardened when they hit the air. Wilson took some of these ribbons home and added oil and the flavor to make our beloved cheese puffs.

After this, the company started another flaker up just to produce what they named Korn Kurls. You might be better acquainted with Frito-lay's Cheetos. Cheese puffs, as fun and interesting as they are, are really not that great for you. They lack fiber and protein and are a snack high in fat and calories.