It's Magically Delicious

So it's that mystical day on the calendar when we honor some guy who taught the druids to stop building stupid stone monuments to pagan idols. And how do we honor this man? With boiled cabbage and meat so salty you could leave it on the counter and come back and eat it in a week and suffer no ill effects.

Nonsense.

Here, for the first time ever, I will share a recipe that I'm about to create in my head. It's called Shepherd's Pie, American Style.

Ingredients

2 cans corned beef hash
1 onion chopped
1 can cheap green beans
1 bag frozen hash browned potatoes
16 tablespoons butter (8 sticks)
1/2 cup beef broth
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 graham cracker crust
1 cup Lucky Charms cereal, crushed

Method

1. Dump bag of hash browns into pan, salt them until all you see is salt. Throw some butter in there.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, melt 12 Tablespoons butter (1 + 1/2 sticks) in large frying pan.
3. Sauté onions in butter until tender over medium heat (10 mins). Dump the can of green beans in this.
4. Add two cans of corned beef hash and sauté. Add tons more salt and a shitload of pepper. Add worcesterchire sauce. Add half a cup of beef broth and cook, uncovered, over low heat for 10 minutes, adding more butter as necessary to keep moist.
5. Dump hash browns in bowl with remainder of butter, season to taste.
6. Place corned beef hash and onions in graham cracker crust. Distribute hash browns on top.
7. Cook in 400 degree oven until bubbling and brown (about 30 minutes). Broil for last few minutes if necessary to brown.

Sprinkle with crushed Lucky Charms cereal and serve with side of strawberry jam.

Serves four.

It's OK to Stereotype Italians

Had dinner tonight at a local Italian joint called...Alberto's. Yes, we heard no less than seven freakin' Frank Sinatra songs. (I hate that guy. OH, Yes, I said it.) We dined outdoors, though, to avoid the Pacino and Sopranos framed photos inside.

This image is from the menu cover. Pure class. It deserved to be messed with.


It's perfectly acceptable in advertising to stereotype Italians. Next time you hear an ad for a local pizza place or Italian restaurant, chances are pretty good you will hear a guy talking all "Mama mia!"or an older lady encouraging her grown children to just, "Eat! EAT!"

But I will give Alberto's these things: Their food is more than passable and their house wine is fortified.

Jack Bauer Never Eats

I think I saw Jack Bauer drinking a cup of coffee once. But he never eats, uses the restroom, sleeps or does anything else that normal Americans do. But then, he's not normal. And he's a TV character. (The guy who plays him has been known to hoist a few drinks, that's for sure.)

On a weekend trip to America's Oldest City, Mrs. Jetpacks and I were slightly bemused after leaving an independent restaurant. We didn't leave with takeout boxes. Because we finished our meals. And we weren't stuffed. My grandfather used to call this feeling "satisfied." We don't know what that means in America anymore.

And so I was wondering if any restaurant chains might like to try a twist on their marketing plan. Instead of super-sizing, instead of portions so large they should feed two people, instead of boxing up everyone's leftovers (or scraping everyone's leftovers into the trash), instead of contributing to the Obesification of America and the subsequent health problems caused by being a stuffed glutton, what if a restaurant chain went with a trial program whereby they offered smaller portions? They could present it in a thousand ways, such as helping curb a national epidemic, using the savings to contribute to the world's starving, keeping your refrigerator free of rotting half-eatens...whatever.

There are restaurants I only frequent once in a blue moon because whenever I leave them, the memory of being so full I'm sick stays with me longer than the memory of the taste of the food or the ambience of the place. And even if I'm not stuffed, the food in the fridge in the styrofoam container is never quite right heated up later in the microwave. (Mexican restaurants, you are the worst. With your bottomless bowl of chips with salsa, most of us are full by the time the entrées arrive.)

So, Applebee's, Outback, Red Lobster, Bennigan's, Hard Rock, T.G.I. Fridays and all the rest, whaddaya think? First one to the table on this idea wins. All the rest look like copycats. (Wendy's was first with the Value Menu, now all the fast food joints have a value menu.) It's time to swing the Portions Pendulum back in the other direction.

We don't know what hunger is anymore. When we say "I'm hungry," that usually means, "I'd love the taste of a monster Chipotle burrito right now." And in a country where eating is a sport and waste is a national pastime, the chances of a corporation going with a responsible idea like this are pretty slim. No pun intended.

I see product placement shots in "24" all the time. Maybe Jack Bauer can be eating at a Hard Rock cafe and he orders from the "Reasonable Portions" side of the menu? He knows he can't take it with him and he knows he'll be lucky to get through his meal without being called way to save his country, so he orders smart. A nation might follow his lead.