Fuddruckers

I had lunch at Fuddruckers with some old co-workers. I hadn’t been to Fuddruckers before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew they had hamburgers, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.

I soon discovered that they have many sizes of burgers and specialty burgers as well. I finally settled on the 1/2 pound version of their Southwest Burger — consisting of guacamole, bacon and monterey jack cheese. Really, as soon as I read “guacamole”, I knew that this burger was for me (I’m a real sucker for avocado).

The made-to-order burger was hot and very tasty. And, I hadn’t had burger with guacamole before, but I look forward to having many more :).

Tuna Sandwiches

I have a tuna sandwich for breakfast and lunch every day. And, each day I use a 12 oz can, which is the equivalent of two “normal size” 6 oz cans of tuna. So, that gives me 32g protein per sandwich.

In the past, I used to add sliced tomato and sometimes even avocado to the sandwiches as well, but I’ve stopped doing that for now. So, my sandwich creation is fairly simple: tuna + low-fat mayo + rye bread.

Just yesterday, Julie offered a suggestion that she had read in a magazine. According to the magazine, by mixing tuna with mayo, the saturated fat of the mayo tends to counteract the good effects of the omega-3 fats in the tuna. As a substitute, the article recommended trying a mustard-based vinaigrette instead.

Why they recommend a mustard-based vinaigrette, I have no idea. Maybe the authors just happen to like mustard-based vinaigrettes and wanted to pass along the suggestion. At any rate, the important part is that the dressing contains monounsaturated fats (such as olive or canola oils). So, in that sense, I suppose that any dressing would be just as good (assuming that it also had no saturated fat).

As I mentioned, I use low-fat mayo and, of its 2g fat per serving, only 0.5g of that is saturated fat. So, in my case, I’m not sure how large the benefit would be. However, there’s a chance that using a vinaigrette may be even more tasty than mayo anyway. So, next time I go out for groceries, I may just pick some up.

Come to think of it, I have some Wish-Bone “Just 2 Good” Blue Cheese dressing in fridge (with just 2g fat per serving, as the name implies). And, sure enough, it has no saturated fat per serving. Mmm — tuna sandwich combined with the power of blue cheese…

Peeps + Peanut Butter

I was feeling a little peckish after breakfast this morning, so I was looking around the kitchen for a little snack. There’s not much around these days, as I’ve stopped buying cookies and Newtons for the time being.

I still hand plenty of Peeps — resulting from a 90%-off sale at Target after Easter — so I turned my attention to those. I was about to eat one raw, but then I recalled that I may as well nuke ’em. From there, my mind went into overdrive — “What if I could add a topping to nuked Peep to magnify its goodness?”. And, from there, I turned to peanut butter.

I just opened up the jar — reduced-fat, no less — and dunked the helpless Peep in there. I made sure that his little body was covered in peanuttyness. From there, I just placed him on a saucer and nuked him for 12 seconds on high.

Man, you thought nuked Peeps were good? This was spectacular. It was like taking the Peepiness to a whole new level. It was just fabulously delicous. Mmm, I’m going to have to exercise restraint to stop myself from eating too many of these ;).

Raspberry-Walnut Shortbread Bars

I subscribe to the newsletter for BackOfTheBox.com. As the name implies, the site features recipes found on the back of boxes and cartons.

And, today’s recipe was for raspberry-walnut shortbread bars. The original “box” was apparently Diamond Walnuts, as they’re listed by name as one of the ingredients.

I like both raspberry and shortbread, so that combination sounded pretty tasty from the start. And, walnuts would only tend to improve upon that ;). I was optimistic about my chances of ever being able to complete the recipe as its ingredients were fairly ordinary (walnuts, flour, sugar, butter, jam…).

However, looking more closely, it looks like it could take a while to bake (bake walnuts 8-10 minutes … bake crust for 25 mintutes … let cool for 5 minutes … bake completed-bars for 25 minutes).

So maybe it’s a bit much effort for an everyday cooking jaunt. But, they could work well for a holiday or other special occasion.

How Much Inside?

David Brake, also known as “the guy that owns blog.org” passes along How Much Inside?, the site that measures how much stuff is inside various things (go figure).

For instance, they answer the burning questions, “How much Oreo Goo is inside a pack of Oreos?” and “How many square inches of Magic Shell are in a bottle?”.

Simply put, magic shell is awesome. It is ACTION FOOD! It forms a hard shell when put on top of ice cream, which protects it from burrowing insects and mites. It is the perfect way to make ice cream more fun & your classmates jealous.

Developed in the 1960s through a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army and Industrial Light and Magic, magic shell was designed to be a bulletproof camouflage coating for armored vehicles. […]