QOTD 2010: The Afterparty

[Hell Toupee]

Pretend the ninja thinks it's the first.... 

For 1/1/10:

What is the weirdest thing you've seen on a roadtrip?

[vizzah]

I miss QOTD!  I can't believe no one has answered this.

To answer the last one, probably someone brushing their teeth on in their front yard while holding a baby on their hip. 

Today's QOTD:

What have you tried cooking at home that's come out terrible or inedible? 

[c-lando]

Oh, Man. I guess we missed it because it was sort-of on a holiday.

H2P's Q: Two old men getting in an argument over religion at the Cracker Barrel in Cleveland, TN. The one guy stormed off, but being very polite, he made sure to say "Good Day" first. It was AMAZING. This was the same Cracker Barrel trip that started off with The Greg holding the door open for an old lady. You would think he had been the first gentleman she'd ever met because she exclaimed, "Well what a giiiiift!", as she walked through the door. This is an inside joke with us now and one of us will say the same phrase in the same voice whenever we see someone do something nice (or one of us does something for the other that catches us off guard).

Today's question...
Well, you know the answer to this one, vizzah. I recently made a cold noodle salad with a peanut sauce that was TOTALLY horrible. BLAGH. I had to throw the whole thing out. There was NO helping it.

[Kwyjibo]

I got a frozen dinner once that was supposed to be chicken in peanut sauce.  It turned out to be more like beaks in asshole sauce.

I attempted to make, well, I don't know what I thought it was going to be, some kind of chicken with veggies in like a ginger sauce.  I had no recipe, thought I was just going to invent something, I guess.  Totally forgetting that I don't know the first thing about cooking beyond sauteing a piece of chicken or sticking something the oven.  Man was it terrible.

[Wherle]

It turned out to be more like beaks in asshole sauce.

I just belly-laughed pretty hard.

[rva]

I think everyone has made that same mistake Kwyjibo. Stir-frying seems so quick and simple... and it is in a way.  But there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a sauces.  You can't just dunk stuff in soy sauce, ginger, and scallion and expect it to taste like Kung Pao chicken or whatever.

It's not like it's hard in a technical sense, because you're just mixing stuff together. But it does require a recipe because there's more flavors in Asian cooking than it appears.  Even Asian people (including the majority of Chinese takeout places) just go to the Asian market and buy bottled Oyster sauce or Black Bean Sauce instead of making it themselves.

I guess it's like that with most dishes.  If you have a recipe, it's easy.  If not, you have to know what you're doing.  My friends who are chefs can whip up something tasty in five minutes because they know how herbs and spices work.  But make them follow an exact recipe, and they would probably do worse than my non-chef friends who know how to roll up a pastry or how to make a souffle rise perfectly or something weirdly technical like that.   

[Kwyjibo]

It turned out to be more like beaks in asshole sauce.

I just belly-laughed pretty hard.

I know that seems like it's just a funny or clever thing to say, and is therefore likely an exaggeration, but I shit you not I cannot even communicate how nasty it was.  I forget where I got that shit but it was hands down the lowest quality frozen food I've ever encountered.  The chicken looked like those slimy little fatty pieces of meat from the back side of the chicken breast that you never eat, except it had come from the chickens that had been in the lung cancer ward of the chicken hospital, it was gray and it made my stomach swim to even have them near my mouth.  I have no idea who's (or what's) colon they extracted the peanuts from for that sauce but it was grim at best.

[Poncho]

First question: (I missed it somehow)
I was driving through Illinois on I-64, which was completely empty of traffic (this is the most barren interstate I've ever been on) and I see something BIG in the road ahead.  I slowed down to almost a stop... it was early, early, early in the morning... just after dawn.  I see what looks to be a giant bearskin rug laying in the road... EXCEPT it's a buck!  The deer's body has been exploded into molecule size pieces and is in the shape of a fan on the road.  The deer's head is sitting upright STARING AT YOU from the center of the two lanes.  It 100% looked placed there... I have no doubt it was... but the pure obliteration of the body was insane.  I have illustrated it as best I can with my gift for awesomeness in MS Paint.


I found this while looking to see if I had taken a photo of the deer... I didn't remember taking one... but this is from the same trip a little later just on the other side of Missouri...


Second question:
I've done this too many times to count.  I moved out at 18... I tried insane combinations of anything and everything I had in my house.  Mostly with horrible results.

[vizzah]

AWESDOME.

[MissKitty]

HT's question: I once saw a tarantula spider crawling across Route 66 wearing a sundress.

Well okay, it wasn't a sundress, but the damned spider was so big that it should have been wearing one.

Today's question: I had major FAIL at homemade white bread using a Delia Smith recipe. Not sure what I did wrong (unless the yeast was bad) but that bastard was so hard and heavy that we used it for a doorstop for at least a week.

[Juliana]

Roadtrip-
On the way back from a show in Indy (Flaming Lips, BTE or Avett Brothers, I can't remember which), we saw a train engine on a Semi's trailer.  It was crazy.

Cooking-
I made brownies with Andes mints chopped up in them once.  Only, it turned out to be a cake mix instead of a brownie mix.  It wasn't sickening or anything, just weird to have cake with andes mints in it.  I can't think of any major disasters, but I'm sure Kwij will call me on it if he thinks of any.

[The Hegemo]

Roadtrip: Dunno if riding with my parents to Washington CH and back to see my grandparents counts as a "road trip" but we once saw a small plane that had landed on the median on 71 near Wilmington.

Food disaster: I made guacamole once when I was much younger, but I did not understand the difference between a clove of garlic and a head of garlic, so it was more like garlic-mole.

[c-lando]

Food disaster: I made guacamole once when I was much younger, but I did not understand the difference between a clove of garlic and a head of garlic, so it was more like garlic-mole.

Oh Man. That had to be INTENSE.

[Ella Minnow Pea]

I was just waiting for the first one to be answered! And anyone is welcome to ask the question if you get here before me.

QOTD
When there's a winter weather warning, what do you make sure you have on hand at home?

[vizzah]

Food, cigarettes, booze. 

I usually start freezing leftovers around November to prepare for such an event.