8 Happy Traveler Sing-Along

Dear Reader,

Cleary we are awesome.  Please enjoy this next installment, which happens to come immediately after our last installment, free of charge.  And you better enjoy it as much as you can.  Who knows when we’ll post again?

Indubitably Yours in Crockering,

Emily and Mike

# 8 - Happy Traveler Sing-Along

Opening Remarks.

This recipe in the section “Foods That Go Places,” and is actually a recipe In Disguise.  We’ve definitely seen this card in the deck a few times, but the only thing that caught our eye was the title: “Happy Traveler Sing-Along.”  “Huh,” we’d say,  “that’s a weird name for a recipe.  But it looks like doughnuts.  Probably nothing special.”  And we move on.

But recently Emily, intrigued by the prospect of a Happy Traveler Sing-Along, actually took the time to read through the recipe on the back.  It is in fact, a recipe for doughuts.  POTATO doughnuts. 

Curiously, no further mention of happiness, travelers, or singing is made on the back of the card.  So just what is a Happy Traveler Sing-Along?  Perhaps we’ll magically understand when we eat the doughnuts.

Making It.

Emily:  Ok.  OKOKOKOKOK.  THIS recipe is amazing.  Yes it’s doughnuts!  But they are made out of instant mashed potato flakes.   AMAZING.  Also - I’m much more awake than last time.  I hope to actually be able to make sentences this time.

I am just so intrigued by this concoction that I can’t wait to try it.  Mike is making me wait because he’s watching the last 19 minutes of his John Adams biographical film (hahaha).  So I will just keep writing about how excited I am.  Also, we need a deep fryer.  But we don’t have one of those, so we will be concocting one.  EXCITING.  I wish Ryan Perry was here to enjoy the frying with us.

The actual recipe card called for “Potato Buds Instant Puffs” and, loving a challenge in the grocery store, we set out to find these magical buds.  You could say we were a bit surprised to enter the instant mashed potato section of the grocery store aisle and find “Betty Crocker Potato Buds” in a dusty box on the top shelf.  Holy crap Betty, when you meant Potato Buds, you really weren’t kidding.  You invented these things!  Sorry we made fun of you.

(19 minutes later)

Mike: The end of John Adams was really sad and emotional.  First his daughter Nabby died of breast cancer, then Abigail died, and then Thomas Jefferson and Adams both died.  I’ve been crying my eyes out for the past hour.  Clearly I’m not the Happy Traveler Betty Crocker envisioned for her Sing-Along.  I’ll try my best to rally, though.

Emily: We’ve got some ingredient substitutions happening tonight.  We don’t have enough flour, so we’re going to substitute a little bit of whole wheat flour.  And then it says in the ingredients that you only need Potato Bud Instant Puffs, but then on the recipe card that you need to actually follow the recipe for making Instant Puffs on the Potato Buds box, which requires milk.  But we don’t have milk, we have Dairy Ease.

Mike: Dairy Ease is milk, just w/out lactose (I’m lactose intolerant).

Emily: We add milk to the Potato Buds, and it smells awful.  Like butthole, and cardboard, and wet cardboard.

Mike: I really don’t think it smells like anything at all—

Emily:  Mike is rallying and throwing ingredients into the mixing bowl.  It kind of feels like a race.  It’s very exciting.

I have Mike break the three eggs into a separate bowl so that if one is bad, it doesn’t taint the other ingredients.  He proceeds to break all three eggs into the same bowl so it doesn’t really matter anyway.  Also it was a cat food bowl. We are classy.

The shortening is clumping up in the mixture so we read the recipe card and it says beat thoroughly.  Oh boy.  We’re getting into heavy duty baking mode.

Mike is upset about the clumping.  I think he’s still sad about John Adams.

Emily: The dough is really really soft and brown (I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be this brown, or if that’s because of the whole wheat flour.)  Also, I feel like all the ingredients – eggs, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla – would make a dough anyway.  So why did we need the instant mashed potatoes?

The dough has been assembled, and now we have to let it sit for 20 minutes. 

Incidentally, this provides us some time to discuss our Betty Crocker honorable mention recipe: Cold Meat Morsels.  

This recipe made it all the way to the final cut simply based on its picture (which is very attractively laid out), and silly name.  But in the end it wasn’t picked because it’s just mini salami sandwiches.  Nothing really that exciting.  But we’re including it here because it deserves a place on this blog, even if we have no intention of making it.  Believe us when we say that we’ve got PLENTY of amazing recipe cards still to go through in our collection, so you may be seeing additional “honorable mentions” in this space from time to time.

Aaaaand we’re back.  It’s been 20 minutes, and so the dough should be sufficiently rested by now.

Mike: We get to work cutting the doughnuts.  But of course we don’t own a doughnut cutter, so we use a large juice glass for the exterior, and shot glass for the hole.

Emily:  Like I said, we’re classy.

Also, we jerry rig a deep fryer with just a saucepan.  The recipe calls for immersing the doughnuts in about 3-4 inches of oil, but we run out of oil after only about 2 inches.  So 2 inches it is.

Mike:  It’s not the number of inches of oil you immerse your dough in.  It’s how you use it.  Or something like that.

It occurs to me at this point that we’re always running out of ingredients and altering the recipe in some way so as to suit the ingredients we have or were able to find.

Emily:  It’s not that we’re not organized, it’s that we’re cooking in a modern age.  We don’t necessarily have a doughnut cutter, or 18 vats of oil on hand, or a jar of crab apples.  I also wonder what Betty would think of our use of whole wheat flour.

Emily drops a doughnut in.  After a few minutes we get this:

Emily:  Holy shit it looks like a doughnut.  It’s perfect!  And it smells like French fries!

We cook more doughnuts and holes.  Things are going well!  Mike takes note when a hole gets stuck in a nut, at which time Emily remarks that she’s surprised more sexual innuendo hasn’t come up.

Emily: Why didn’t we make these for breakfast?

Mike:  It’s true.  Against some odds, this is starting to work out really well.  We don’t even have one of those thermometer thingies to tell us how hot the fat is getting.

(Emily: I’ll tell you how hot the fat is getting! oh!)

Eating it.

OK.  This is truly a momentous occasion.  As we were mixing the icing for the donuts, Mike just took a donut hole, dipped it in the chocolate frosting, and ate it.  This is the first time that we didn’t have to play rock-paper-scissors to see who eats first!  Then I did it!

People, they are good!!!!  I can’t even believe I’m saying these words.  They taste good.  I will even say yummy.  (In the time it’s taken to write these words, Mike has eaten 3 donut holes and has experimented with raspberry jam.  I’m speechless.

Now we’re making the Chocolate Icing.  We might have messed up because we bought chocolate frosting in a tub but the recipe card says dry frosting…hmmmm.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of dry frosting.

Mike asks if these are better for you than the average donut.  I reply that I’m not sure and ask why he thinks that.  He says they feel lighter.  I think it’s his confidence returning from the abysmal depths of the pork breakfast travesty.  I also think he’s forgotten all about John Adams. 

Emily: Upon eating my second hole (Mike: You said second hole!), I realize that they are good but not great.  A little dry and they might have a weird aftertaste.  And they aren’t as good as donuts from a regular store.  But they definitely aren’t bad.  And that’s saying something.

We’ve created the icing and dipped the donuts.  Now it’s time to let the icing set.  Ours don’t look at fancy as Betty’s on the card but she didn’t tell us how to make them look like that so we are stuck with just chocolate frosting.

Closing Remarks.

Emily: These doughnuts are solid. BetBet, I don’t even know what to say.  I had a good feeling about tonight from the start, but I would have never guessed that these happy traveler sing along instant mashed potato doughnuts were going to pass the test.  They truly truly did.  We still don’t know what you were thinking with the happy traveling singing part of this whole thing.  But maybe we’ll throw one in a basket and travel with it to our friend Jess’ comedy show tonight.  And then delight in her disbelief that it is a doughnut made out of potatoes and it’s actually edible.   I’m  a little concerned we smell too much like deep fried doughnut to go out in public. We were actually hovering over the “deep fryer” in disbelief for the last twenty minutes.

Mike:  I’m just in shock right now.

You know, when Emily and I initially conceived of this project, we were thinking about all of the horrible recipes in this recipe card collection and thinking about how funny it would be to try them.  Never did we actually consider that something we’d make would actually turn out good.  Not good in the “we followed the recipe to a T and it came out looking just like it was supposed to, which is terrible,” or good as in “it’s midnight and I haven’t eaten in 11 hours and I’m super hungry, which is why this giant cream cheese-filled burger tastes good.”  I’m talking about actually good, as in tasty, as in something we’d bring to our friend Jess’ show tonight.  You might think that doughnuts would be a slam dunk.  But POTATO doughnuts?  C’mon.  Raise your hand if you thought that would work out.  Didn’t think so.

Addendum- we did end up taking a doughnut to Jess.  She took one bite and said  “It’s not bad” and then casually put the thing aside.  Maybe they aren’t THAT good, but she finished her one and only bite so that’s saying something.

 

 

7. Pork Potato Apple Bake

Dear Reader,

How did it get to be August already?  Damn.  (Actually, as we’re writing this, it’s pretty much September by now).  We’ve run out of excuses.   We’re doing our best to get these Betty Crocker recipes in once a month, but it’s just not happening.  So obviously we missed July (and are about to miss August, too), but we applaud you in your patience.  We’ve got a couple of recipes coming up in rapid succession here, which hopefully will make you happy and keep you busy reading until we get our shit together.

As always, we remain:

“Yours in Crockering,”

Emily and Mike

Opening Remarks.

Since this is the first Betty Crocker breakfast that we’ve made (technically this belongs in the “Family Breakfast Brighteners” section), we have decided to challenge our culinary skills by getting up super early and attempting to put this breakfast together before work on a Monday.  We’re interested to see if this recipe really is better in the morning.

Another small note, there is a second pork breakfast listed on this recipe card involving Canadian bacon and pineapple.  For the sake of our health, we decided to focus on only the Pork-Apple Potato Bake recipe.  Get over it.

Making It.

Emily: First off,  it’s hard to type.  My lips aren’t working or my feet.  Also my fingers.  Mike is fine - he’s a morning person and he is making coffee.  Thank the good lord for coffee.

(A few minutes go by)

He is now packing lunch for the day.  What the fuck???

Mike:  Whatever.

Emily:  A note on the ingredients:  We bought them last night.  There was no prep involved. 

(At this point, typing has become too difficult for Emily - things don’t work well for her when she’s tired – so Mike officially takes over much of the rest of the documentation while Emily concentrates on the actual making.)

Mike: The recipe calls for, among other things, “pork luncheon meat,” “vaccum-packed canned sweet potatoes,” and “dark corn syrup.”  There were a number of “pork luncheon meats” from which to choose at the grocery store, but we decided to go with Low Sodium Spam, because deviled ham is not sliceable.  Emily has never had Spam before, and was EXTREMELY reluctant to purchase it.  I had to insist that it would not kill her.

Emily:  Actually I’ve had Spam before.  In your mothers ham and pickle finger sandwiches she makes for showers and parties.  I haven’t ever cooked Spam before or opened a can and touched it. 

 

Mike: As for the other two ingredients, we couldn’t find “canned sweet potatoes,” but did find “canned yams.”  Again, I was the one who (correctly) insisted that they were the same thing, but Emily wasn’t so sure.  This is one of those rare times when I actually won an argument about anything, and so the yams were bought.  This morning Emily actually read the can for the first time and realized that they were the same thing.

(The cats seem very interested in the Low Sodium Spam.) 

Emily: Can cats eat Spam?

Mike: I wouldn’t.

Emily: You’d have US eat this and not the cats?

(She cuts up a LOT of the spam and sets it down on the floor for the cats.  They’re not so interested after all.)

Mike: Re: the dark corn syrup.  Emily INSISTED that we had it, even though she never looked in the cupboard.  (Here were my exact words in reply: “Are you sure it’s dark corn syrup?”  Emily: “Yes.”)

Guess what?  We only had LIGHT corn syrup after all.  I say the hell w/ it, and we use that.  Emily has this to say about the corn syrup: “Holy shit that’s a lot of corn syrup”)

 A note on the tone of this posting:

While technically higher functioning in the morning, Mike also tends to be a grumpy bastard.  So if you notice a decidedly anti-Emily bent to this month’s posting, that is why.  Rest assured, we still like each other during much of the rest of each day.

Mike:  Finally, the apples.  The recipe calls for a jar of spiced crab apples.  Which, naturally, are quite impossible to find.  In fact, we couldn’t find a jar of any apples, so we picked up a bag of dried apples. 

Emily: I asked my mom if she ever remembers cooking with spiced crab apples, and she said they used to be popular around the holidays, but that she hasn’t seen them for 25 years or something like that.

Mike: Upon purchasing the dried apples, Emily announces that we’ll just re-hydrate them, as if she’s a scientist.  No plan is then given for how this will take place, even though I ask her for one.  We’re now halfway through the recipe and the apples still have not been “re-hydrated.”  I don’t think it’s gonna happen, folks.

Emily notices that the can of spam says it’s good until December of 2010.  Emily says that everyone’s freaking out because the date of our wedding (she’s obsessed w/ wedding planning right now) isn’t until 2 years off.  Well, the Spam doesn’t care.

Emily: The making of this recipe is pretty straightforward.  It’s just layers of stuff.  But very odd layers.

Mike: Also: crunchy peanut butter.  Emily is not pleased.  I am.  Emily has this to say: “At least we’re getting rid of it.”  Apparently just having it around the house makes her upset.

At a few minutes past 6 Emily realizes that she hasn’t been halving any of the recipe (except for the Spam).  Just minutes after announcing that the recipe is very straightforward (only layers, etc.), she follows up w/ this: “This isn’t easy to do.  Don’t let anyone ever tell you that mixing peanut butter and corn syrup is easy.”  I’m never waking her up before 7am again, ever.

Evidence: “This is a dish I got from my mom’s from that old lady.  It’s kind of perfect.” (I have no idea what she’s talking about)

 Emily: We needed to adjust the ratios - like the sweet potatoes and the Spam were off and so we took some away and used less sauce.

The melted butter instantly re-congealed on top of the cold orange juice.

(The coffee has finished brewing)

Emily:  Yes!  Coffee!

Emily: We decide that the “crabapple” rings look like the thing in the Spiderwick Chronicles that lets you see faries and stuff.  We need to rig up some glasses to be 100% dork.

We just watched that movie last night.

Mike: This isn’t how it went down at ALL.  Emily puts one of those dried apples up to my eye and I go “it’s like in the Spiderwick Chronicles.”  Which, again, we saw LAST NIGHT.  Emily then replies that I’m “such a dork she loves it” and starts typing away.

Mike: Alright Mr. Wizard, how are we going to re-hydrate these apples? 

Emily: Why are you calling me Mr. Wizard again?”

Mike: Check out this gem from Emily (Em-gem?): “We halved the recipe.  Do you think we also need to halve the time?  Probably not, right?”

Whilst the pork-potato thing is baking, we tuck into some coffee and biscotti.  We’ve started referring to biscotti in this way: bis-COAT-ee (really slowly and deliberately, and in a terrible faux Italian accent).  We were in NH the other week looking at a possible site for our wedding, and I asked a local where I could get a good cup of coffee.  The woman pointed me in the right direction, and then said “They also make some really good bis-COAT-ee.”  Keep in mind that she only pulled out the terrible Italian accent for “biscotti.”  Emily and I wanted to try to coax other Italian words, like ‘veranda’ or ‘cappuccino,’ out of her to see if she said all Italian words in this way.

While the dish is in the oven, I mention how badly we fucked up the apple situation.  This is what Emily has to say: “We used to have a crabapple tree in my friend’s yard growing up.  We never ate them.  They attracted bees.”   She falls asleep at the kitchen table shortly thereafter.

A few minutes later, when Emily is awake again  we look up online where to buy spiced crabapples in a jar, and find a forum where people discuss where to buy them. 

Mike: Apparently some people (German people) used to have them on their table at holiday time.  Emily has convinced herself that jarred crabapples are extinct, like the woolly mammoth.

With about 5 mins to go, the apples on top are totally burning.  Not good.

5 minutes go by.

Eating It.

Mike: We take the pork breakfast out of the oven, and compare how Betty’s picture looks way better than our burnt monstrosity.  I start to ask a question, but Emily cuts me off by farting really loudly.  She then says “I have to go to the bathroom,” and leaves the kitchen.  When she re-emerges a few minutes later, she announces that she has had “a great idea.”  But it has to do with wedding vows, and not anything about Betty Crocker.  She then says “It’s a good thing I just shitted out my entire intestines so I can eat this.”

Emily has asked me to write the following disclaimer: “Please put a disclaimer that I’m not stupid.”  She then looks at the pork breakfast on her plate and says “Mine has a weird tendril on it.  Do you see?  I think maybe it’s part of the sweet potato.”

Another disclaimer: Emily really is not stupid, or disgusting, or anything.  She’s really funny when she’s tired, though.

Emily: Mike puts some on his plate first.  Because even though I’m apparently stupid, I can still beat his ass at rock-paper-scissors consistently.  Here’s what he has to say: It smells nutty.  And burnt and Crispy.  He takes a corner segment.  He’s having a hard time cutting the apples. He attempts to just eat apple.  I correct him, and he take a bite of everything.

Mike: This is really interesting because none of the flavors have mixed.  I can taste them all separately.  It’s like in a band how all the instruments go together to compliment each other.  This – nothing compliments anything.  It’s all just sitting on top of each other.  I can taste the Spam.   And the peanut butter.  And the burnt.  And the apple.  This apple situation is disgusting.

Emily:  Mike then goes in for another bite and hurts his tooth.  He says “You’re gonna hate it.” but keeps eating.  Then: “Ah…there’s the sweet potato.  That doesn’t go so badly with the sweet potato.  Probably should have left the extra sweet potato in.”  He shakes his head, and says: “It’s not good.” (Note: he’s still eating) “ I don’t know if Spam was the right thing to do.  It’s hard to tell.”  (Another bite.  He starts reading the recipe card.)

I ask: “Would you like it for breakfast?

He says: “No I think the Canadian style bacon with pineapple would be better.  This is not good.  I think we did a terrible job this morning.  (He's eaten the entire thing.)  It’s your turn.  I’m sick.

Mike: Emily’s turn: She tries to take a bite, but can’t cut the burnt apple.  She then refers to a weird hair she has on her plate.  She smells it, then shakes her head and takes a bite.  Sour face, followed up by sad face.  She shakes her head.  Wipes the corner of her mouth.

She says: “Can we talk about texture?  The apple is really, really leathery, and that doesn’t go well w/ the peanut butter, which is crunchy.  And then the Spam is just like…foamy.  Like salty foam.  I didn’t taste the potatoes at all.  I’m not sure they would’ve made it better, though.  I don’t think anything would make this better.  I don’t think real jarred crabapples would make this better, because they’d be juicy, round and big, and throw the whole ratio off.  I don’t like crunchy peanut butter.”

She pushes her plate aside and says “No thank you.”  She then turns on me and snaps – “I can’t believe you ate that whole thing.”  I say I was hungry, and she says  “I don’t like it.”

Closing Remarks:

Now, we’re the first to admit that while we’re both extremely creative people, we don’t work well together on creative projects. In fact, ask any of our friends what it’s like to be in the room with us while we are collaborating on a random project and they will look you dead in the eye and say, “Run.  Run Away. TRUST us.” 

The beauty of this blog is that we get to test this theory at least once a month in new and exciting ways.  As you can see, this installment failed miserably on many different levels.

We clearly weren’t at our best this time with regards to the following skills:

Ingredient Finding

Typing

Measuring

Baking

Talking

Friendliness

Controlling Bodily functions

Rock-Paper-Scissor execution (just one of us)

But, we both agree that Betty was also not at the top of her game when devising this breakfast recipe.  In fact, she failed pretty miserably with this one on many fronts- ingredients, flavor, and appearance to name just a few.

So, in the end, everyone was a loser.  And it’s ok.  Sometimes you just have to just accept it and move on. 

We’re actually pretty excited to move on…far far away from the land of Spam, vacuum-packed sweet potatoes, and jarred crabapples.  It’s just not a happy place.  No, seriously, look at me.  Run.  Run Away.  TRUST us.

 

5 & 6 Men are from Mars, Betty Crocker is from Venus

5. Ladies Seafood Thermidore
6. Man-Pleasing Appetizers

Dear readers,
Um, so, can we apologize once again for being super late and generally absent for the past two months? Is an apology even acceptable at this point? It’s like we broke up and now we’re asking for some make-up make-out time- which is always interesting and generally a win-win for everyone, right? In our defense, we’ve been kinda busy with some small stuff like APPLYING AND GETTING INTO AN MFA PROGRAM (Emily) , and you know, some other small stuff like GETTING ENGAGED (Emily & Mike). (Sorry for the yelling, we’re excited!) Anyway we will attempt to make it up to you, dear fabulous, totally attractive, also you have great hair, reader, by not only giving you two whole recipe reviews at once but by posting them on our brand spanking (that’s hot!) new blog solely dedicated to our Betty Crocker adventures and to your enjoyment.

Can we still be friends? Lovers?
Sincerely,
Emily and Mike.

Opening Remarks

Hello, everyone. This is Mike speaking. I’m going first, so it’s up to me to relate to you what exactly is going on here with this posting. Since we’ve been away for some time, we decided to do a kind of “Battle of the Sexes” style of thing, where I make a recipe from the Better Crocker Catalogue for Emily and some of her female friends, and Emily makes one for me and some of my male friends. We try to outdo each other in the awfulness of the recipe, so as to better lay claim to overall sex superiority. Or something like that.

Luckily, Better Crocker has made this very easy for us, conveniently separating some recipes along gender lines. In today’s enlightened times, the idea of “gender-specific culinary creations” might seem a bit odd, but you have to remember that this catalogue was conceived back in the 60s, a time when men were men and women were women (and weren’t allowed to wear long pants or have credit cards). So it follows that back then there’d be foods that only men or women could eat. Anyway we were intrigued by this idea, wondering whether there really were foods that were strong enough for a man, but PH-balanced for a woman. So we decided to try a couple.

Mike’s recipe: Ladies Seafood Thermidore

A Few Disclaimers

Disclaimer:
I had a feeling that the recipe I chose, “Ladies Seafood Thermidore,” would be really, really, bad. Like, bad to the power of 10. When the picture looks like throw-up (as this does), it actually has to taste much BETTER than average food, just to justify the fact that you’re eating something that looks like puke in the first place. Otherwise, why would you do it? You wouldn’t.

Unfortunately, most foods that come out looking like puke (when done the right way) rarely taste like anything but.

Strike one.

Disclaimer:
Another thing I should mention is that I’m not at all a good cook. In fact, I am a very BAD cook. I get bored or distracted, and end up missing key ingredients, or doubling things I should’ve halved.

Strike two.

Disclaimer:
Also: I was very heavily drunk while making this recipe. It wasn’t necessarily by design. I didn’t set out going “Oh I’ll get drunk and screw up the recipe because I’m drunk.” Rather, I just got bored and distracted (see above Disclaimer) and starting drinking lots of beer. My notes from that night look like they were written by a mildly retarded 3rd grade hobo. That’s how drunk I was.

Strike three.

The poor ladies never really had a chance.

Making It

Making Ladies Seafood Thermidore really sucked, because it had lots of gross stuff in it. Just check out some of these selected ingredients and recipe words:

· canned shrimp (smelled like tinny fart)
· cream of shrimp soup (smelled like tinny fart)
· “Dutch Oven”
· “cartilage removed” (disgusting)
· canned lobster (Couldn’t’ find it. For all I know, it no longer exists, so I substituted ridiculously-expensive packaged fake lobster meat. Canned version almost certainly would’ve smelled like tinny fart, though.)

The recipe basically called for me to put everything into a pot and heat to boiling, and then pour the resultant over crunchy bread things that for some reason Bet refers to as “croustades.” This all seems easy enough except for the fact that I bought only ONE can of cream of shrimp soup, instead of the TWO the recipe called for (see how bored and distracted I get? It starts way back when I’m just buying the ingredients.). This led to a very time-consuming reclamation project in which I tried to create a substitute for cream of shrimp soup with water and milk (in retrospect, if I’d simply farted in a can of water and then microwaved it I probably would’ve gotten much closer to the real McCoy. But that’s enough about farting for a while.). This led me to inevitably put too much liquid into the mixture, which meant I then had to try to thicken the Thermidore out by adding a bunch of flour to it. While I was frantically running around trying to get the consistency to come out right, the ladies were sitting at the kitchen table, trying to figure out the meaning of word “thermidore.”

Jess: A thermidore is a dutch oven for ladies. Farting under the sheets. Queef!

It comes out that apparently Jess loves “queef.” I’m assuming she loves the word, and not the act.

Of course, by this time I’d accidentally spilled too much flour into the pot, so that I had to then go back to adding more milk and water to thin it back out. But I also put in too much of that, so it’s back to the flour (and a couple more beers to get me through it). And so on. Before long I’m a sweaty, drunk, frazzled mess. It’d taken me over an hour to get this far, and I was starting to feel bad that I was making my ladies WAIT for what inevitably was going to be a horrible experience.

I go heavy on the paprika, because I figure it will mask the taste a bit.

Jess: The smell is making me queasy (queefy?). I've never had creamed seafood of any sort. I've never thought to myself: "Shrimp looks really good. Why don't I beat it into a pulverized state and reform it into food?”

Hey Hennes, it looks like your old walls!

Emily: I ate the shrimp-biscuit-shrimp crap, so I think I’m primed for this (see #3 – Crusty Salmon Shortcakes).

Hennes: OOH! It just turned a weird color! The shrimp is blending!

At this point two very climactic things happen at once:

1) The whole mixture starts to take on this weird, grayish color (like the color of death) that was not expected. I figure “what the hell” and throw in the rest of the fake lobster meat.
AND
2) A special guest calls in!

A Special Guest Calls In

Jess takes a call from her mom in New Jersey. This is very exciting because Jess had been telling us that one of the first things her mom did after getting married was go out and buy a Better Crocker recipe catalogue! We excitedly tell her what we’re doing and why. She doesn’t seem all that enthused, and I wonder if she’s mad at us, like we’re somehow denigrating her first post-marital possession. Which of course we are.

Jess’ Mom: What section is it in?

We tell her (“Crowd-Size Entertaining” – once again how wrong you are Bet. You expect us to entertain a crowd with this shit?). She runs off to look it up so she can follow along. The croustades are out of the oven, so it’s time to eat.

Jess: A revelation: it’s pink and smells sweet. Just like ladies!

(By this time the mixture has turned pink, probably due to the bunch of extra fake lobster meat I put in at the end. It did not smell like ladies, however. At least not the kind of ladies I want to associate with.)

Emily: It smells like low tide.

Jess loses a round-robin rock-paper-scissors tournament and has to go first. Her mom has by this time located the recipe, and leaves us with this:

Jess's Mom: I bet this wasn't cheap, so you’d better appreciate it.




Eating It

Jess’ Turn
I present to the ladies three plates of Thermidore on croustades to choose from. It’s clear Jess does not want to eat it. She keeps talking, which is something she does when she’s nervous.

Jess: I can feel the bile from my stomach stirring.

She selects the middle plate, but does not take a bite. She continues stalling by making the other two select a plate. For some reason Hennes takes the one that’s all soupy, with the biggest chunks.

Emily: I’m taking the one with the renegade lump.

There’s one plate with a renegade lump in it. Emily takes that one.

Hennes: It looks like cat puke, Mike!
Jess: It looks actually like the picture.
Hennes: Oh yeah, it looks right…

Jess starts breathing heavily and repeating herself. She reminds me of a robot that’s low on batteries. I feel bad.

Jess: All right, hold on. All right, hold on. All right, hold on. All right, hold on. All right, hold on!

She takes a bite, and continues breathing heavily.

Jess: It's very much like the sea. You know when you order fish at a chinese restaurant, and it takes like seafood, like the sea?

Hennes: Look at all the chunks of seafood. This might be Mike's worst nightmare, right here.

It is. I’m really glad this Thermidore is PH-balanced for ladies only!

Jess: If I went down to the ocean and saw one of those ocean beds--

Emily: --A tidal pool.

Jess: If I went down and licked a tidal pool, it would be like this.

Hennes’ Turn
Say what you will about Hennes, but she is a trooper. She digs right in, and then exclaims that her bite seems a bit too dry and digs back in for more Thermidore slop. She takes an amazingly large bite, and immediately frowns, as if realizing her mistake. Meanwhile, Jess is still breathing heavily, and has closed her eyes.



Hennes (frowning, with that perplexed look): I’m not sure what I just experienced. It's salty and soggy. Wow. Huh. That's all I got. It's just really salty. I just keep experiencing the butter croost aid over and over, and that part is nice. I ate a lobster chunk.




The consensus is that I made a really good croustade. Which is good because it’s basically just a crust of bread with butter on it (I consciously slathered a LOT of butter on). I figure it would’ve been really sad if I’d screwed that up. Of course they did take me a really long time to make, because at first I tried to cut the middle out of the bread with a cookie cutter like the recipe suggested, and then gave that up and decided instead to just make a little indent in the bread to hold the Thermidore with. That probably took me a good 20 minutes to figure out.

Emily’s Turn
It’s taken so long for Hennes and Jess to finish that Emily’s bit is cold and mushy. Extra grossness there. She eats it though, and fans herself a few times. She also makes that perplexed look.

Emily: It's like...um. It is...it's like sour. It's sour and salty. Can it be both? But also mild. I would be unhappy if I came to a party and was served this. Like if you went to a lady's party...

Hennes: It's just like I don't have words. It's like - it's seafood. It's bland, and weird. It's salty, and it's seafood, but you can't even distinguish what kind of seafood. This dish does not make me feel like a lady.

Jess: I imagine 6-7 ladies, all dressed in their fineries, all making this face (makes puke face)...the texture is obtuse.

Em: It's so...coastal.

Jess: I'm going to taste it again. I feel like my mouth needs to know what just happened to it.

The Thermidore is cold and firm now, and is starting to take on a slapping noise when touched with a fork. They all take another bite (miscellaneous smush sound as they chew).

Hennes (mouth full of Thermidore): Horrible. This is horrible.

Em: It is worse! Barnacle! Barnacle!

Hennes: Yes, now I see muscle bed!

Jess: Ew! With a subtle cardboard.

Me: That might’ve been an accident.

Em: Tastes a little bit like can.

Hennes: I'm tasting an overwhelming sweetness.

Emily: I might puke a little bit.

Final Comments

I don’t know what “Man-Pleasing Appetizers” are going to taste like, but I really can’t imagine they’ll be worse than this. I’m really glad I didn’t have to eat this Thermidore and feel confident that I’m going to win the Battle of the Sexes.

…and yet, I’m not nearly as satisfied with my presumed victory as I should be. This whole “solo-cooking” experience was really stressful for me. With the recipes we’ve made before, if the food was bad I always knew that Emily and I were equally responsible for it’s horribleness (Horribledom? Horriblocity?).

But I felt wholly responsible for the mess that was Thermidore, and that bothered me because I truly like these ladies. No matter how much I wanted to pick a horrible recipe and win, I didn’t really like seeing my friends suffer.

Maybe, after all, Better Crocker was on to something. Maybe Ladies Seafood Thermidore really is for “Crowd-Sized Entertaining,” provided the crowd you’re entertaining is made up entirely of strangers.

I feel like I’m beginning to understand Betty. Like I’ve at long last learned the spirit of Christmas.


Emily's Recipe: Man-Pleasing Appetizers






Opening Remarks

[To get Mike back for making us eat crap..ahem, sorry, let me try that again...] In a gesture of gratitude for a lovely meal, some of my talented lady friends and I dedicated an evening to “cooking for men” for Mike and our dear friend Ryan. Luckily Betty Crocker had this exact evening covered. (Oh Bet Bet, you man pleaser you!) In a recipe section called “Men’s Favorites”, I settled on a card titled “Man-Pleasing Appetizers”. It seemed a well-rounded spread (beverage and snack) and also because it posed the challenge of locating chicken livers. (shudder).

There is no way to do the beauty of this recipe section justice in my own words so I present, word for word, the exact description of “Men’s Favorites” Straight from Betty to me, and then, um now, to you:

About MEN'S FAVORITES…

When a man’s fancy turns to thoughts of his favorite foods, chances are good that you’ll find the right recipe in this collection. If he’s in a meat-and-potato mood, tempt him with Pot Roast and Sour Cream Gravy. When he yearns for food like mother used to make, bring on Chicken Fricassee with Dumplings light as a cloud.

For occasions when only gourmet fare will do, try him with a masterful Beef Stroganoff served by candlelight. And if he insists the simple things in life are best, wait till he tastes you Savory Duckling on a Spit!

They’re all here – princely recipes for kingly dishes, tested and male-approved for you.

Cordially,
Betty Crocker

Amazing, yes? Take a minute. Are you with me? Good, let’s move on.

The Man-Pleasing Appetizers we created for Ryan and Mike were a hot beef broth based beverage called “Pow!” and a broiled, meaty appetizer called “Rumaki” (no exclamation point). The recipe card only had a picture of Pow! So we had no idea what Rumaki looked like. Also, we had no idea of what the word Rumaki meant. Betty provided no explanation. It was swathed in a veil of mystery as most of these recipes have proven to be.


Making It

Ok, let me start by saying that while Ryan is a happy carnivore, Shannon, his wife, and one of my fab helpers, was vegetarian for years up until like 2 seconds ago. She is now at the point where she gingerly enjoys a turkey sandwich. Hennes and I are meat eaters but honestly, the ingredients for these recipes were enough to turn our stomachs. While Hennes and I grossed each other out with bloody organs and stinky meat juice, Shannon gracefully busied herself by making the alternate dinner- a baked ziti- and NOT LOOKING AT THE CHICKEN LIVERS. It was probably for the best. The manly men played video games in the living room while we cooked. It was very domestic in a creepy commune sort of way. We had all been drinking for some time.

Shannon: (while photographing the ingredients) “These ingredients look like trailer trash”.




To start, the chicken livers for the Rumaki had to be marinated for four hours in teriyaki sauce (oops!) so we set out to marinate them for 20 minutes at the beginning of the making process and decided that would be good enough. In order to marinate them, we had to touch them. It was a difficult challenge, only made a little bit better by knowing that we didn’t have to eat them.

The chicken livers came in a small plastic tub for $1.89. Hennes and I pried open the top of the tub and peered inside to what could only be described as something straight out of an operating room. Hennes made me touch them and they were slimy and sticky. Also weirdly connected by a white globule string that made us question how many livers chickens actually had. I thought only one but these seemed paired like kidneys.



Chicken livers wrapped in bacon seemed so odd. Why not use a scallop or a piece of plain old regular chicken? Also, Betty provided a recipe for teriyaki sauce from scratch if you had difficulty locating it in the grocery store. It included salad oil, katsup, vinegar, soy sauce, pepper, and crushed garlic- which is not even close to teriyaki sauce. We used store-bought. After placing the livers in the marinade, it still looked disgusting. No teriyaki sauce was going to save this recipe.

Emily: Shan, I dare you to stir that with your finger.
Shannon: I dare you to ask me that one more time.



While marinating, we decided to prepare the Pow! beverage. This was getting excited. The exclamation points reminded me of musical theater.

During my shopping trip earlier, I was distracted in my search for chicken livers, and accidentally bought beef consommé instead of beef broth. I' not sure I knew there was a difference. Also I forgot the celery for the swizzle sticks so we substituted with some ancient scallions I found in the fridge. And I thought I had dill weed (you’re a dill weed) but didn’t so we used celery salt instead. The consommé in the can smelled like pond, vitamins, and/or farm and only got worse when we heated it up.



While adding the horseradish to the broth,

Hennes: “Horseradish always reminds me of Passover
Emily: Hot roast beef Sandwiches
Shannon: Bloody Mary’s

Sadly, it wasn’t Passover, and we didn’t have hot roast beef sandwiches or bloody mary’s. Those would’ve been way better. All we had were just a lot of raw meat, wine, and some tiny airplane sized bottles of liquor.


Eating It

Finally the Pow! was warmed and it was time to serve. Shannon dropped the scallion in Ryan’s beverage on the floor and just picked it up and plopped it back in the glass. Classic.

Mike and Ryan both commented that it was “really fucking hot”. I warned them to be careful not to burn their lips off. They both asked if it was soup. Clearly it was way more than soup. It had an exclamation point.

Mike: Dude it’s really hot. What the fuck is a scallion doing in my shit?
Ryan: are there frog eggs in it?

Mike lost rock paper scissors and tasted first: “just like cancer soup”. I had no idea what this meant. Ryan started doing stretching and breathing exercises to warm up.

Shannon: Are you ninety and a woman?
Mike: I’ve always suspected it.

He tasted it and gagged. Hennes suggested he swizzle it but I don’t think it helped. Mike stated that “it is a soup without the ‘oop.” Again, I have no idea what this meant.

Apparently this was not a refreshing beverage but they suggested that it might be a welcomed treat if they had just come inside from completing an Iditarod. It was most definitely a winter beverage and would be much more preferable with vodka. They were not pleased.


More Making

After that disappointing first act, the ladies and I headed back into the kitchen to assemble the Rumaki. At this point, Shannon became extremely busy with making the alternate dinner. Suspect.



Hennes and I created a sort of assembly line thing that once again resembled an operating room “water chestnut; toothpick; sugar, scalpel”. After much “ew”ing and “gross”ing we put it in the oven to bake (actually broil) and it began to sizzle and smoke.



Hennes: Holy shit. I think the liver is oozing out!
Shannon: It smells bad. Oh my god- it smells so bad.

Emily: How are the toothpicks holding up?
Hennes: They aren’t on fire yet!





More Eating

A bunch of rock-paper-scissors ties here, but ultimately Ryan lost after Mike figured out Ryan’s method. Ryan didn’t want to eat it but eventually took a bite.

His initial reaction was “teriyaki bacon – not good”. Then it was followed by a “what the fuck is this crunchy center- unnecessary” and closed with “lots of different things happening”. And he continued to gnaw on the chicken liver while Mike took a bite.

Mike’s reaction goes a little like this:

“Chalky? Bacon is good. Not outright bad. But it chalks up in my mouth…ew…Ew! (heavy breathing.)…Feels like all kinds of different fragments in my mouth…. I have all kinds of bits in my mouth…I NEED A DRINK!…I NEED SOMETHING T O DRINK BUT THE ONLY THING TO DRINK IS BEEF BULLION!

Ryan had more to say: “The outside is weird but ok. The teriyaki and bacon is weird. And the water chestnut and liver is like “Boo, fuck you bitch”

After all this though, they both bravely went for round 2.

Ryan: If we were talking about the things that turn me on, a crunchy center is not something that turns me on.

Mike: (smelling it) Dog breath?

We thought Ryan dove in for round 3 but actually he was just eating the bacon.

They agreed that they would probably spit it out at a party.


Final Comments

What is a Man-pleasing appetizer? Why would men need special appetizers? I. Just. Don’t. Know.

Hennes: Maybe men need to replenish their salt after a long day of hunting and gathering, raping, and pillaging.

(Possibly.)

Shannon: This is the widow-maker’s special. This is what you’d serve your husband if you wanted him to die.

(Most definitely.)

In reflection, Pow! and Rumaki were just fat and salt served in different forms.- a liquid and a solid. Mike and Ryan both felt insulted that Betty Crocker thought so lowly of their pallets.

Mike: Jack London would’ve loved it.




Final Final Comments

The Betty Crocker Battle of the Sexes was a great experiment. Not only did we get to create disgusting recipes with some of our good friends, we learned a little something about ourselves along the way. Mike is an awful cook. Emily is not so a skilled chicken liver handler. We are much better as a team.

Most importantly, we are now able to look past our culinary challenges and see the power Betty Crocker holds in bringing people together. What seemed like a war in the beginning really turned out to be an excellent way to share a meal (and gag) with friends. What more could we ask for?

4. More Super Sandwiches

Dear Reader,

We realize that we're getting this recipe in right at the 11th hour, and we apologize. Officially. We've just been kinda busy this past month. So as our way of making it up to you, we chose a recipe card that had not one, not two, but THREE concoctions. We hope you enjoy.

Yours in Crockering,

Mike & Emily

 

Opening Remarks:

Emily: The name of this month's recipe card is "More Super Sandwiches," and it was Mike's choice. I was kind of surprised by this choice because it seemed so...normal. At least compared to the other recipes we've tried. But, knowing Mike, I knew he had a plan.   Also, the Peanut-Bacon-Pickle sandwich sounds kind of gross, but I like all the stuff in it. Besides, anything with bacon in it HAS to be good.

Mike: I'm feeling the need to defend my choice. So here goes: this recipe is from the "Snacks Around the Clock," section which right off the bat tells you it's going to be amazing. Secondly, there are three recipes contained herein: one (Beef-Egg Sandwich) that looks like a particularly hideous pattern of wallpaper from the 70s...

Emily: I know what it looks like. When I was in high school, somebody threw up in the parking lot of Denny's. It looks like that throw up (I think we were coming back from a band trip).

Mike:...one that seems like it could be historically bad (Peanut-Bacon-Pickle Sandwich), and a third (Frank-Sauerkraut Sandwich) that's, well, it's just a freakin' hot dog, isn't it? I have to admit: I was intrigued. Also the name of this recipe card is "More Super Sandwiches." Where are the other "Super Sandwiches?" I don't think there was any "Super Sandwiches" in the recipe library. At least, I didn't see it. Which sort of begs the question: If you're going to go to the trouble of calling them "More Super Sandwiches," shouldn't it be at least kind of obvious what the other plain old "Super Sandwiches" are? Shouldn't there be some sort of pattern to them? But Beef-Egg Sandwich, Frank-Saurkraut Sandwich, and Peanut-Bacon-Pickle Sandwich? First of all, what's so "Super" about any of these - what's so "Super" about a hot dog? When does a sandwich achieve super status? Does it have to be a hot sandwich, or would a plain ol' PB&J make the cut?  There's no explanation.

Making It.

Mike: The making of this recipe marks kind of a major milestone in the history of the Dunbar-Dean household: we used all four of the burners on our stove for I think the first time ever. It's kind of a big deal - we cook a lot. In fact, it got kind of confusing, with so many different sandwiches happening at once.

Emily: I'd like to agree w/ the amazing feat of using all four burners. In addition, I'd like to point out that there was no dairy at all, and no pimentos in this recipe at all. Pretty monumental occasion for my girl Bet-Bet. So we were cooking and there were all these things going on, and we were both drinking (of course), and I feel like we got kind of confused trying to time it all. I felt overwhelmed by components.

Mike: The thing is - and I'm not sure if this had to do with the fact that we're starting to get a bit more comfortable with these recipes, or whether it was a byproduct of the fact that we had so many different things happening at once - but this was the first time we started cutting corners a bit and not following the recipes exactly. In fact, I don't think Emily actually looked at the recipe once during the making of the so-called "More Super Sandwiches."

Emily: No, I definitely didn't. It was very easy, with so much happening at once, that it got really easy to forget what we were doing. I lost focus. But I had two glasses of wine! That helped.

Mike: The making of the Peanut-Bacon-Pickle Sandwich also marked the continuation of an ongoing battle that's been raging (or at least smoldering) since Emily and I first moved in together: whether chunky or smooth is the superior peanut butter. I don't think it's even close, because chunky has all the qualities of smooth PLUS it's also got chunks of peanuts. Clearly that's a value add, and clearly chunky is better.

Emily: Smooth is better. Because if I want peanut butter, I'll eat peanut butter. And if I want peanuts, I'll eat peanuts. Chunky just has too much going on. I just want creamy peanut butter, not peanuts. I don't want to be distracted by the texture.

Mike: So when this disagreement first came up when we'd only been dating for a few months we were both sort of unreasonable about it, but in a cute way because we'd only just gotten together. But then when we actually moved in together we started buying creamy exclusively because basically Emily likes to get her way. But now that we've been together for a while and the "varnish has a bit of tarnish," so to speak, I'm fucking reintroducing chunky. Because why not? I pay the rent, too. We now have separate peanut butters in the house.

Emily: I'll allow it. We have separate jams too.

Mike: So anyway the Peanut-Bacon-Pickle Sandwich called for peanut butter to be spread over a piece of bread. But we couldn't agree on which peanut butter to use, so we ended up spreading chunky on one half of the piece of bread, and creamy on the other half. It was kinda like our version of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, only with two different kinds of peanut butters instead of slave and free states. And a piece of bread instead of the United States (creamy peanut butter is such a slave state, by the way).

Emily: I have no idea what he's talking about. Anyway, we hoped that the peanut butter slavery act or whatever would somehow make the Peanut-Bacon-Pickle sandwich more tolerable. I realize we're not being very linear in our description but it kind of reflects the actual making process- frenzied, chaotic, and all over the place. 

Sometime during the frank-saurkraut making, maybe boiling the dogs, I realized we were listening to Alicia Keyes on itunes and asked which sandwich did Mike think she would like best. This started a game of "Which 'More Super Sandwich' Would This Artist Prefer?" that lasted the entire "making" process.

Mike: There wasn't much special about the making of the Frank-Sauerkraut Sandwich (gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that it was JUST A HOT DOG), but one thing of note did happen: while simmering, the sauerkraut attacked my jeans with a spittle of juice. This made me upset, and I made Emily take a picture to document the attack.

Emily: One last note about the "making" of the Beef-Egg Sandwich. We weren't exactly sure if we were supposed to throw everything into the pan and stir it up, or if Betty was asking us to create a patty-like object. We discussed the possibilities for a while and ultimately decided on the former. In retrospect, it would have been pretty simple to figure out if we actually READ the directions, or you know, LOOKED at the picture on the front of the recipe card.

Eating It.

Mike: I lost RPS, 2 games to 0 (scissors over paper, paper over rock) and so went first. I chose the Peanut-Bacon-Pickle Sandwich first because it looked the worst.

(Oh and by the way: remember how I was talking about our peanut butter feud, which led us to creating a perfectly segregated piece of bread? Well that was all well and good, until we'd actually finished making the sandwich and I CUT IT DIAGONALLY, completely ruining the whole point of a segregated piece of peanut buttered bread in the first place. Unbelievable.)

So anyway I took a big bite. Tasted like the way plastic smells when it's burning in a fire (a taste that for some reason I immediately associated as the taste of brain cancer). But despite all that, it actually didn't seem that bad.

Emily: It did! It tasted like flea collar! It's really a shame we wasted the bacon.

Mike: For some reason I didn't mind it. I think I actually even made a comment about being able to eat the whole thing. But then I took a second bite, which is really when the full horribleness of the sandwich became clear to me. For some reason this is a sandwich that has more awful than can be contained in one bite. Not to be all dramatic about it, but there really wasn't anything about this sandwich that made me think of the words "More" or "Super."

Emily: I didn't like it.

Mike: The other two sandwiches were pretty good though. I spent a little more money and got some Nathan's hot dogs for the Frank-Sauerkraut Sandwich, and I was glad I did. Those suckers are good 'n juicy!

Emily: Mike actually doubted the inclusion of the raw onions on top of the sauerkraut, but I insisted in an effort to keep the integrity of the project intact. In the end, we both thought the onions were crucial and definitely a positive addition.

Mike: Yes. Surprisingly good ratios.

Emily: And something I've noticed: I tend to get all kinds of existential-like with these recipes. I'm constantly asking "Why Betty? Why that choice of processed condiments for a sauce? What is the reason for this strange shaped meat structure? What are you trying to tell me B?"    As predicted, it happened again when I took a bite of the Beef-Egg sandwich. "What is this- a burger or an omelet? The dill pickle makes it seem like a burger. But wait! The egg, onion, and green pepper confuses it all to hell.    Would ketchup help? Cheese? Why are you playing with my miiiiiind?????"   

Don't get me wrong, it was edible. Dare I say tasty? Maybe not. Honestly, I was too distracted by the identity of the thing to really fully consider the flavor. The unanswered question continues to haunt me.     

Final Comments.

Mike: This recipe might not have been a "sexy" pick, but I'm pleased with it. There was a lot going on - from the crazy multi-burner action we had going while we were making it, to another skirmish in the peanut butter wars, to a surprisingly full spectrum of sandwich tastes (Frank-Sauerkraut: good, Beef-Egg: mediocre, Peanut-Bacon-Pickle: awful). All in all, I'd say Betty gave us plenty to think about with this recipe. Plus I was able to slip in a Kansas-Nebraska Act reference which is always good.

Emily: I'm actually glad we dialed it back a little bit and took a moment to really consider the classic sandwich in 3 of it's many forms. And this conservative choice actually sets the stage for the May recipe (my choice) extremely well. I already know which one it's going to be, and it is especially bizarro. Luckily for us all, May starts this week.

Mike: I don't think it was that conservative...

Emily: They're sandwiches! And one of them was a hot dog!

Appendix A

"Which 'More Super Sandwich' Would These Artists From Mike & Emily's iTunes Playlist Prefer?"

1) Eddie Vedder, "Hard Sun" (Frank-Sauerkraut. Can't you just picture him eating one on his tour bus? Not sure why.)

2) David Byrne, "My Fair Lady" (Peanut-Butter-Pickle. Because he's weird. What's the PowerPoint-iest sandwich of the bunch? Probably still Peanut-Bacon-Pickle.)

3) CSS, "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex" (Emily: I can't actually imagine CSS eating anything. Mike: What do they even look like? I can't tell which sandwich they'd like until I know what they look like.)

4) OK Go, "Here It Goes Again" (Beef-Egg)

5) Alicia Keyes, "No One" (Mike: Peanut-Bacon-Pickle. Does this make me racist? Emily:   Frank-Sauerkraut, because she's from New York. And hot.)

6) Band of Horses, "The Funeral" (Beef-Egg, because it reminds them of eating an omelette late at night at a 24-hr diner, whilst pining for a lost love.)

7) Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler" (Mike: Peanut-Bacon-Pickle. Probably the only thing Alicia Keyes and Kenny Rogers have in common. They should totally do a duet though. Emily: I think he'd be in it for the bacon.   I see him eating a lot of bacon.)

8) The Flaming Lips, "The W.A.N.D." (Emily: I...I...just don't know. Mike: I'm going straight up Frank-Sauerkraut here, but with some sort of twist. Maybe a freakishly large Frank. Emily: with alien dancers in santa suits squirting the mustard EVERYWHERE.)