meal thirty-one: jambalaya sandwich, beef bourguid-on
Chris: You know what they say: “Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” This is as good a time as any to tell you that there is basically no way we are going to finish all of this blog in one year. We aimed for the moon, but we just kind of exploded on the launchpad, and now we’re stuck in Flavortown, with no ride. That reminds me, can I borrow like fifty bucks? Originally, we wanted to finish all of the recipes by the end of March 2018. Oh we were so young, shiny, and dumb back then! So much possibility lay in front of us! Now we’ve just been worn down by Guy Fieri world into a bloody stump of a person. The good news is for you: the blog will be continuing for the foreseeable future. We hope to finish this off sometime in the next six months or so. The bad news: Guy Fieri will be part of my life for the foreseeable future. I’ll still have to eat garbage food in a hot kitchen when I’d rather be doing pretty much anything else. People will keep sending me every article they see about Guy Fieri (spoiler: I don’t care. No matter what the article is—I DON’T CARE). I only have myself to blame. Also Allie. I can blame her. Also Guy Fieri. Also that lady who wrote Julie and Julia. Julia, presumably.
Allie has been telling me for months that she feels bad that I have been doing all the shopping and meal planning and hosting, so she will take the book and do that stuff for me. It was very nice of her. So, she took the book, did some meal planning and then made me go grocery shopping. Don’t worry, she helpfully made a shopping list and then took a picture of it and texted it to me. It was super helpful because it was all organized by aisle and it’s so easy to cross things off of a photo on your phone! Just kidding, it was basically scrawled like a ransom note from a kidnapper who didn’t really want the ransom and was also suffering a mild stroke.
Chris: The first thing we made was the Jambalaya Sandwich (!). You know when you’re eating stew and you’re like, “why isn’t this on a sandwich?” There were FIVE types of meat on this sandwich. I went to the grocery store because I am a SAINT and got in the super long line at the meat counter. When I finally got to the front of the line I told the butcher. “Look, I’m going to ask for a bunch of weird meats in super small amounts.” And he was like, “…ok.” I asked for a quarter of a pound of pork tenderloin and he had to get permission from a manager! He didn’t think they were allowed to sell such small amounts. I also got exactly 4 slices of bacon, one (1!) chicken thigh, and smoked sausage. The line continued to grow behind me and I wanted to turn to people and explain myself but there is no good way to say your life is incredibly sad and you live in a food blog prison of your own creation. This sandwich involved cooking the bacon, taking it out, cooking the pork tenderloin in the bacon fat, taking it out, cooking vegetables in the bacon/tenderloin fat, taking it out, cooking the chicken, adding sausage, adding everything back in, adding the secret ingredient (shh! Water), and then it was supposed to simmer for an hour. This was a pretty dumb recipe and it was like eating a soup sandwich but it tasted pretty good because I was very hungry. Chris’s rating: 4 out of 5 meats I actually bought because no way is Guy making me buy five meats.
Allie: I feel like I am getting JUMPED ALL OVER AND STRANGLED like an iguana being jumped on and strangled by a bunch of SNAKES! This may be because I am watching Planet Earth II right now but I DON'T THINK SO!!! This sandwich took so much effort to make and it had so many meats in it. I kept singing "I'd like to be, under the sea, in a jambalaya sandwich in the shade" and Chris kept telling me about how he had to buy small amounts of meat at the store and I had to pretend like that was interesting to me when in reality I was thinking about other things, like doesn't jambalaya usually have shrimp in it? And why doesn't my apartment have literally any way to vent fumes out of it so now my bed is going to smell like a jambalaya sandwich? And why are there so many islands filled with kicky little crabs and can I move there and become their queen? I thought this was pretty good but also sweet snake Jesus, no sandwich should contain five kinds of meat and take an hour to make IT IS A SANDWICH GUYNATHAN FIERI. Allie's rating: 4 out of 5 I've got a song about an octopuses
Chris: We also made beef bour-guid-on which answers the question: what is the hardest substance in the world? If you said a diamond, you are wrong. It is the chunks of beef in this thing. This dish also started with bacon, then we cooked beef, carrots, onions together in beef stock for an eternity. This formed the beef diamonds which we ate over egg noodles. I wasn’t happy. Allie and I started watching the reboot of Queer Eye on Netflix while we were eating this and as they criticized straight guys for wearing cargo shorts, I daydreamed about gay guys coming to fix my life. The first thing they would probably do is tell me to quit this blog, and then I wouldn’t have to do it anymore. I guess what I’m trying to say is please help. Chris’s rating: 0.5 out of 5 members of the fab five
Allie: I definitely give off a vibe that says THIS LADY LIKES STEW. I don't know what it is but I do wear a lot of stew-colored sweaters and I like dipping bread in things. This stew made me wish I was eating a bowl of something soft and flavorful, like gravel or glass. Before this nightmare began, I thought that beef stew was hard to ruin. Now I know that Guy Fieri can ruin stew, just like I know the names of Guy Fieri's sons and the fact that Guy Fieri lost his virginity to a bowl of fettuccine alfredo. Also, Chris talks a big game about wanting gay people to come in and change his life for the better but I have been giving him great advice for YEARS like "of course you can wear a denim jacket with jeans" and "we should stop this blog" and "please kill me" and he ALWAYS IGNORES ME. Also he doesn't think Antoni is a real cook, a fact he told me WHILE EATING A JAMBALAYA SANDWICH. After this blog is over I am never speaking to a heterosexual person again Allie's rating: 0.5 out of 5 stew-p there it is
Final Summary:
Total dishes made: 98/157
Worst Sentence in one of these recipes: "I learned to make jambalaya from a Cajun buddy of mine named Ron Walker. (We call him 'Unyawn.') The first time I saw him make it was at a BBQ class in Houston, Texas. Ron brought in this huge cast-iron pot and set about making his killer jambalaya. I'll never forget it." Great story. Short, but pointless.
Things that should have gotten their own sandwich before jambalaya: caramel/cheddar popcorn mix, a thick roux of Vicodin mixed with red wine, that candy you get in the dish from the bank, a mason jar with like a kale salad in it
Chris: In other news, I recently discovered that Allie thought Tic Tacs were a type of gum and it is BLOWING MY MIND
Allie: Shoot for the stars, even if you miss, you'll die in the vacuum of space