gross » semisweet&nuts

Good & Plenty Day

October 24: Good & Plenty Day.

Okay guys, I’m about to say something drastic.

Dare I say… super drastic.

I think I’d rather eat another Chocolate Covered Insect than another Good & Plenty. I think I’d rather eat another Fried Scallop than another Good & Plenty. I think it’s safe to say that Good & Plenty are super duper gross. I ate one, Scotch taped up the box and will be sending them to my mom, the only person under the age of 80 to actually like black licorice. Blehhhh.

Tomorrow: National Greasy Foods Day

National Chocolate Covered Insect Day

October 14: National Chocolate Covered Bug Day!

So, National Chocolate Covered Bug Day was yesterday (October 14), and despite ordering them over a week early, they didn’t arrive until today. Booo! Instead of catching my own bugs and dipping them in chocolate myself, I decided to wait until the ones I ordered arrived.

They came in a regular ole box. If the sellers were FUNNY they would have put them in a box with holes poked in it. But they’re not funny.

Anyway! Here they are in all their glory. Two crickets and four larva, dipped in milk or white chocolate.

I was really hoping Bryce would eat one with me, but no dice. I had to go on this journey alone.

Here is my Chocolate Cricket Odyssey:

Tomorrow: National Chicken Cacciatore Day!

National Gumbo Day

October 12: National Gumbo Day

Ohhh gumbo. If we were in a relationship on Facebook it would definitely be “it’s complicated”.

A few years ago I was given a gumbo mix. One of those “all the spices are in this box, just add the water and proteins of your choice!” dealies. It ended up looking like dark brown water with turds (the sausage I added) floating in it. Not my finest culinary moment. But I gave myself a pass since I didn’t really MAKE it, it was a mix!

I was confident that REAL gumbo made by ME would be a different story.

Ahem. It’s not. Apparently gumbo is the creole word for “dark brown smelly water with sausage turds floating in it”.

(This is after I shredded and put the chicken back in, so it’s slightly more appealing than just the sausage turd water.a)

What I learned making gumbo:

There is a spice mix called ESSENCE. Essence of what? I’m not sure.
Gumbo takes hours (and hours) to make and if you don’t start cooking by noon, you will be eating dinner at 10pm.
You will require a McDonald’s snack when it becomes apparent that you won’t be eating the brown water until 10pm.
You will have a minor breakdown when you remember that there’s a New Orleanian restaurant in town that sells gumbo for $4 and you could have gone there and also had a hurricane instead of dropping 40 bones at the grocery store and slaving away for hours.

The final product isn’t bad. I think it tastes the way it’s supposed to taste… it just that Bryce and I aren’t gumbo people. Sorry, Emeril.

Tomorrow: National Yorkshire Pudding Day

National Fried Scallops Day

Let me preface this with that I tried, guys. I really did.

Today, October 2, is National Fried Scallops Day. While I typically champion all things fried, today’s food of honor was a definite challenge for me. I don’t do seafood, okay? The only “seafood” I like (okay, LOVE) are crab rangoons… and we all know that there should be quotations around the word crab in this instance. I’m also a-ok with anchovy paste and fish sauce. Fermented fish juice > fresh fish, at least in my world.

I ventured to Whole Foods after work to pick up some scallops. I had to choose between the small Bay Scallops or those big and juicy monster Sea Scallops, so duh I picked the itty bitty ones. And I bought two.

I was excited to take a picture of the wrapped up scallops with a price sticker that said like, 10 cents or whatever, but apparently if you buy two tiny wads of seafood they let you have them for free. So, thanks Whole Foods for taking away my joy. Seriously, I was legitimately more excited to take the photo of the price sticker than I was to eat a fried scallop. (Bad sign?)

Turns out, scallops stink. Are scallops supposed to stink? Did he give them to me for free because they were rancid? Here, weird girl asking for TWO scallops, take the old, rank ones!

I set up the world’s smallest dredging station and heated up some oil. I believe this was my first foray into deep frying in my own apartment. In college some of my dude friends (shout out to Wilson Street boys!) had a massive deep fryer and sometimes we would fry things and drink beer. I don’t recall frying up scallops. Pizza, yes. Scallops, no.

Verdict? Ish is nasty, y’all. It was nasty on its own, and it was nasty dunked in a bunch of sriracha. I might have cooked them too long, but the texture wasn’t the issue so much as it smelled like I was eating from a dumpster behind a Chinatown fish market on a 100 degree day.

Excited for a new day. Tomorrow: National Carmel Custard Day.