It's a hid and seek time in my latest Cheap$kate Review for a Dollar Tree Lobster Egg Roll. A Cheap$kate Dining Review video is at the end of this blog post, so be sure to watch it and see how the Lobster Egg Roll rates from 1 to 9, 9 being best.
My latest Deal of the Day is a Lobster Egg Roll by Imperial Garden and a Product of the USA. They are showing up in the refrigerated food section of my local Dollar Tree store.
First off, I sought and could not find any lobster. I did run across a little fake crab though. And I mean very little. But there is a subtle seafood flavor to the filling.
The filling is mainly shredded and sauteed cabbage, which is fine really, most egg rolls are. The cabbage is plentiful and quite tasty. It's cooked soft and seasoned well. Other ingredients include: onion, carrot, garlic and celery. Sesame oil and mirin add extra flavors.
Click on any photo to see larger.
But if lobster is listed as the second or third ingredient, then I was hoping (against my better judgment) that there would be a small piece of lobster or two thrown in. All I tasted was a few minuscule flakes of fake krab. And I tested 3 of these Lobster Egg Rolls.
A small flake of fake crab, or krab.
I am a fan of fake Krab and use it in a tasty Mexican-styleBlack Bean & Seafood Cevicheand a sushiCalifornia Roll. Fake crab, or Krab (pictured below,) is ground and processed white fish, made to look and taste like real crab (click here to read about it) and costs just 2 to 4 bucks per pound, compared to expensive real crab prices.
And I did an autopsy on the Lobster Egg Roll, and put on my reading glasses, too, in search of lobster. If it was there I couldn't see any. Maybe it's ground so small that it just blends in with all the sauteed veggies?
What this Egg Roll lacks in Lobster, it at least makes up in quantity. This is an extra large Egg Roll the size of a fast food burrito, at about 6 inches long, so most will be satisfied and stuffed.
It's a relief that the crunchy wonton skin of the egg roll wrap is tasty - it has that deep-fried-in-oil lusciousness. Now because I microwaved the Egg Roll the wrap was a little mushy. Next time I would let it reach room temperature and either heat it up in a frying pan or bake it, according to the package directions.
You get a small packet of sweet and sour sauce. It is very good with a mainly pineapple juice flavor with just a little sour vinegar. It goes well with the sauteed veggies and egg roll wrapper.
I thought I would take a chance with a Lobster Egg Roll from the Dollar Tree -- oh, well, I should have know better. Next time I'll just stay with regular pork or veggie egg rolls.
As a basic Egg Roll for a buck, this is an okay Deal of the Day. Where it fails is the non-existent lobster and very little fake crab.
I'm giving this Deal of the Day a double rating. That is, one rating for the seafood filling and another rating for the veggie stuffing - it's a 2fer!
So on the 99 Cent Chef's Cheap$kate Dining Scale of 1 to 9, 9 being best, I give Imperial Garden Lobster Egg Roll a...? Hmmm,just watch the video below to see how it rates!
Lobster Egg Roll - VIDEO
Play it here, video runs 2 minutes 57 seconds
My YouTube video link for viewing or embedding, just click here.
The Witching Hour fast approaches and the Cheap$kate Recipe Conjurer is ready to cast his spell on your taste buds this Halloween season.
Once, a couple of days after Halloween I scraped off the melted wax from inside our pumpkin. I split the pumpkin in half and roasted them in a 350-degree oven for an hour and a half. I'll put the sweetly caramelized, soft orange flesh to good use.
And roasted pumpkin is tasty enough as a side dish, right out of the oven.
Roast pumpkin skin is soft to the touch, and the flesh is easy to scoop out when it's baked done. Let the pieces sit for about 5-10 minutes to cool down. Scrape out the cooked pumpkin flesh with a large spoon (discard any skin that may come off with it.) Now you are ready to make a few pumpkin-based recipes.
Pumpkins are the cheapest this time of year, and they're tasty too, as you will see, so keep on reading and click on any recipe name to visit the original blog post recipe.
Way below 99 cents per pound!
My Rustic Pumpkin and Corn Chowderis easy to put together. The other ingredients are broth, half and half cream (or milk substitute,) a can of corn, onion, garlic, and red or orange bell pepper. Pretty simple, but complex in flavor.
The roasted pumpkin chunks will break apart while cooking in a bath of stock and cream, so there is no need to blend it to mush - as most recipes tell you - hence, my calling this veggie chowder "rustic."
It's a pasta sauce made with sauteed roast pumpkin, garlic, and onion, and sweetened with white wine. Finish the dish with as much Parmesan cheese as you like.
I use coiled fusilli pasta, but you can use any cheap dried pasta you have on hand.
And this is a pasta dish your vegetarian friends and family will love.
I like to finish up with my Mom's Pumpkin Pie recipe video. She makes hers with canned pumpkin, but just imagine how more intense the flavor will be with freshly roasted pumpkin.
You will want to smooth out the pumpkin flesh like mashed potatoes. You can use a potato masher, fork, or lightly blend roasted pumpkin.
I would also add your favorite sweetener to the pumpkin. It's up to you how sweet to make it, but you can start with 2 tablespoons worth. Just taste the pumpkin puree until it is sweet enough to suit your taste. This recipe calls for evaporated milk and that will add more sweetness as well.
These comfy entrees will feed your whole family. I hope you saved your pumpkin like I did. So, just cut out the soft and moldy bits, scrape off the candle-blackened part and wax, and get cooking!
Gory Halloween warning! Time to get squeamish with the Ghoulish Gourmet's creepy imagery of raw meat and viscera. I'm about to get medieval for Halloween and the following Dia del los Muertosor Day of the Dead.
This Sinister Cheap$kate's ghastly recipes are laid out like a bloody scene from a Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe story. Once you've digested this macabre blog post, your taste buds may nevermore be the same.
And if you're a vegetarian, avert your gaze! Or peak through hand-covered eyes to read my queasy prose. I'm sure to be on Morrissey's #hit list if he ever sees this - he's pop music's most morose vegan. (And I'm a big fan of his songs with The Smiths.)
Some of my most spooky recipes may make your skin crawl, while others will have your taste buds baying at the moon with pleasure, mouthful after mouthful.
So read on, and don't forget to click on any recipe name that will bring you kicking and screaming to my original blog post to see all the hair-raising details -- presented with gory gifs, bloodcurdling photos, grisly videos, and eerie text.
Right off the bat, I like my ChupacabraCarne Asada steak and hamburgers medium-rare. Oozing is fine by me - E. coli be damned!
Grilling meat supercharges the flavor and brings out the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal in this Paleo Chef.
The Terminator T-bone
Raw bloody carcasses of meat have been disturbingly depicted in fine art. Rembrandt van Rijn is primarily known as a Dutch painter of moody portraits during the 17th Century, and I am especially influenced by his "Carcass of Beef" (flayed ox) study - just check out the audacious composition with gory details.
And here's the British artist Francis Bacon's 20th Century version, below.
The Chiaroscuro Chef photographs flesh against dark backgrounds lately (shot on a blackened cookie sheet) - usually lit from a single direction, with deep shadows, very much inspired by Caravaggio. An artfully dark and forbidding example is my recipe forPasta alla Genovese, where I slice and dice cheap beef shank, slaughterous enough to make a zombie weep.
Offal is not so awful to this Carrion Chef. After watching a classic horror flick on the big screen, I cruise LA's fog-shrouded boulevards and alleyways during the midnight hour looking for ways to quell my ravenous appetites...for tacos, that is!
Buche (stomach,) lengua (tongue,) and tripas (intestines) are on the menu at sidewalk taquerias and taco trucks throughout Los Angeles. Watch the shuddersome viscera-splattered video below to see what stops me in my tracks.
On a sweeter note, while not meat, the gooey insides of a Halloween special edition Oreo cookie are like sweetened bone marrow. You don't smash it to get to the finger-licking orange frosting, a simple twist will do.
Get your hands dirty knawing on my Rosemary's Baby Back Ribs. You'll need extra napkins to soak up the BBQ sauce smeared on your lips and dripping from your fingertips.
My Silence of the Lambs Curry is creepy-delicious. And my video cooking directions are as easy to follow as leading a lamb to the slaughter.
It can get messy cooking with meat. You have to have an iron stomach. Try breaking down a pork shoulder sometimes, like I do below for my ghastly Texas Chainsaw Carnitas video recipe.
It's probably the most artistically nauseating footage I've ever shot - but, boy does it taste heavenly when you cradle a stuffed tortilla, plump with citrus and cola-marinated, slow-cooked pork.
Ground chicken and turkey are mushy and wet, more so than ground beef or pork...ugh.
Check out my ground poultry The Blob Patty Melt video to see what I mean -- yuk!
After chicken, pork is the cheapest flesh. When hacked, mangled, and minced into sausage, it's delicious for breakfast or added to stir fry like my Garroted Green Beans and Gruesome Ground Pork recipe below.
This may sound perverse but it's actually fun to animate with ground meat, it's like playing with Play-Doh, just greasier. Check out my video below to see the messiness.
Are you still with me? Man, are you hardcore! I'm getting extra creeped out just assembling this blog post.
Ever gut a fish? Whoa, that is one freaky task! Slice the belly open, yank out the internal organs then chop off the head -- oh, I'm feeling faint just remembering the slimy viscera and the nauseating smell - barf !!
If you want to scare the bejesus out of your dining guest, then serve them a Jaws Whole Grilled Fish - head on!
This tin-framed, bloody-looking slaughter scene comprised of tomato-sauced fat fingers of sardines is one of my most visited food blog posts. And the morbid visitors are mostly from Europe (Transylvania?) - go figure. My pasta dish, Suspiria Sardines in Tomato Sauce with Olive Oil over Pasta, is a delicious mouthful worth sinking your incisors into.
Sushi is typically made with freshly butchered raw fish. It's so artfully presented that you miss the gore that goes into each delicate slice of aquatic flesh.
Here's one of my tastefully shot Sushi recipe videos, the simply presented, Mothra Tuna Sushi.
Shrimp would not seem spooky, right? But, buy head-on jumbo shrimp and try beheading, peeling, and removing the digestive tract/backbone sometimes...yuck! But, man are they delicious when my Mom serves them up in her Stephen King Shrimp & Rice recipe.
Halloween has a dark streak of humor and some of my recipes do, too. Take my wackyOrange Trump Chicken Nightmare on K Street....please. It's the color and shape of a pumpkin and looks like a McDonald's Chicken McNugget, just like our former Twit-in-Chief, but my entree is made with real chicken pieces, not a pink slime composite.
How about a recipe where aslice of Bride of Frankenstein Turkey Bacon swallows up a Brussels sprout like a disembodied human tongue...yikes!
I like to cook a whole chicken or leg quarters. There's nothing like the carnal pleasure of ripping apart a cooked poultry carcass and sucking every piece of succulent meat off the bones. My Tingler Chicken Tinga and Paranormal Poached Chickenare some saporous examples.
Below is the Eviscerating Cuisinier's squishy butchering of a chicken breast and leg quarter. It's the cheapest flesh you can get and I have all kinds of poultry recipes, here.
So get out there and have an entertaining Halloween holiday. It's not all blood and guts! So, I'll leave you with an appallingly tasty ghost story.
Nibble: to pitch along the far edges of the strike zone, around home plate.
The Penny Pinch Hitting Chef has a dugout full of recipes for baseball lovers that will leave enough green in your wallet to buy an extra keg of beer for your tailgate party. Just click on any recipe name below to see what I mean. There are no foul balls in this recipe list!
First at-bat, hot dogs are the kings and queens of the ballpark. And boy does this Knight of the Round Dinner Table have a couple of royal recipes for you to try.
High Cheese: A fastball thrown high over the plate.
For Dodger fans, the LA Street Dogis the grand slam of tube steaks. If you have never had one, you don't know what you're missing. It's a kaleidoscopic flavor bomb of bacon-wrapped wieners sauteed with sliced bell peppers, onion, slathered with mustard, mayo, and ketchup and topped with a grilled whole jalapeno....whew, now that's a mouthful.
Check out my recipe video below, where I also take you to the back alleys of downtown Los Angeles to see for yourself how they do it in the streets.
Homemade L.A. Street Dog -- A Delicious Hot Mess!
Behold the Chicago Dog: it's a warm, rosy-red grilled frank topped with mustard, nestled in a black-speckled poppy seed bun, flanked by half wagon wheel slices of tomato, Day-Glo green relish, chopped onion, a wedge of pickle, two sport peppers, and finished with a sprinkle of celery salt.
This is the real thing; just looking at it makes me shudder from the winter chill on a blustery, cloudy Chicago day. Now that you have the recipe make your own version using easy-to-get regular pickle relish, just don't tell Cubbie fans or you may get aced with a beanball.
Authentic Chicago Dogs can be had here is Los Angeles, too, at the exceptional Fab Hot Dogs in the San Fernando Valley. So all you Windy City transplants will definitely feel at home there. Check out my video below to see how a Chicago Dog is done right.
Tired of stale, soggy stadium hot dogs? I have a great and easy Corn Dog Recipe made with Vienna sausages -- but you can use regular wieners. There will be no foul balls as your hungry guests dip these crunchy coated pig skins into my tasty honey-mustard sauce.
Since you have the fryer going you might as well make a batch of my Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. They're as light and airy as the Goodyear blimp.
Ran out of hot dog buns? Well toss a few wieners or sausages on the grill and try my version of a Currywurst. Your recipe batting average just doubled when you slather on grilled tubes steaks: my spicy mix of ketchup, cumin and cayenne spices. It's also a great starter appetizer on game day.
Boston Red Sox revelers will eat up my riff on a Lobster Roll -- a cheaper Scallop Roll. And if East Coast fans can't make it Los Angeles, then throw another log on the fire and gather in front of the big screen with a steaming bowl of my cheap$kate Clam Chowder.
Scallop Roll
Rhubarb: a bench-clearing baseball brawl.
The flyover states love a succulent and smoky BBQ Pulled Pork. No need to travel to the coasts for delish eats, touch down right here for my succulent pork recipe.
BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich
Smoked pork rules in the Lone Star State. My Pulled Pork recipe is easy and cheap to make, of course. Just check out the video below or click here to see all the tasty recipe details.
Texas is known for meaty Chili. Southerners love their Chili with or without beans. While beef is expensive, I get around that by using cheap beef shank. Once you've cooked it down for a few hours, beef shank is as tender as any pricey cut of meat. My Homemade Meat and Bean Chili recipe is perfect for your sports gathering and can be served during all 9 innings of the game - make plenty just in case the game goes into extra innings.
Set the Table: getting runners on base, ahead of a power hitter.
Next to pizza and hotdogs, Fried Chicken is a fan favorite. And I've come up with a crunchy coating that will empty the bleachers and have fans storming the kitchen! Kickoff the World Series with my Fried Chicken Sandwich Recipe or use my special flour and spice mix for regular bone-in chicken parts. My mouthwatering video below is better than an inside-the-park home run.
Your boys and girls of summer will take a 7th inning stretch and huddle around your cast iron pot of my Mom's fragrant and spicy Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya and Cajun Gumbo.
Mom's Cajun Sausage and Chicken Gumbo
Serve a pitcher's mound size plate of Teriyaki Spam Musubi for your Hawaiian friends.
Spam Musubi
Or, set out shredded slow-cooked pork, chopped onion and cilantro, with warm tortillas and your favorite salsa, for Mexican Carnitas Tacos. Your food fans will start a wave, from the living room to the kitchen table.
Can of Corn: An easy to catch high fly ball to the outfield.
Does beer go with Steamed Articokes? Hmmm....you'll have to try out my recipe to find out - do let me know if you try it!
If fish is on your mind then hook your bleacher bums with some of my homemade Sushi Recipes. Try tagging out a Spicy Tuna or California Roll. How about setting up a Fielder's choice of chopped veggies and fresh fish and roll your own deliciousHand Rolls? It's easier than you think, and I have simple photo-illustrated instructions a click away, here.
My Fish Tacos deserve the MVP award for deliciousness. I make mine Baja, Mexico-style, that is, battered and fried tender fish fillets with a cabbage and creme topping.
Crack a few eggs for a meal most fowl, not foul -- click here to see my Veggie Frittata recipe that will feed all your hungry team players (add some ham pieces to fill out the frittata.)
Dying Quail: a fly ball weakly hit, that lands in between the infield and the outfield.
Looking for a relief pitching recipe? How about a different twist on Buffalo Wings with my African Spiced Water Buffalo Wings? This original recipe features chicken legs, but you can substitute wings.
The Cheap$kate Chef'sTurkey & Black Beans Chili recipe will add extra points on your scoreboard for flavor. Make it spicy, but be sure to have an ice chest full of brews for all your bench-warming guests.
And don't forget to send in from this Whisk Welding Culinary Coach a most versatile of plated plays, the Pita Pizza -- a varied list of toppings you can use would fill the coaches chalkboard.
Pita Pizza
So dig deep into my bullpen and click on any of the tasty treat namesabove to watch an instant reply of recipes from my blog. Your guest will be cheering you on -- from their cheap seats!
I'll leave you with my wacky video below, where I swing at all types of produce...and knock them out of the ballpark!
