November Foodie Penpal Exchange is a post from: CopyKat Recipes | Restaurant Recipes

So, my current goal is to lose some extra weight. I must say, I don’t do this easily, or at times willingly. I love the summer time, it means roasted corn on the cob, for me this mean corn with lots of butter and salt. The salt fiend in me, isn’t something I am trying to fix at the moment. I really dislike light versions of food, this roasted red pepper low fat butter is my personal way to skirt around calories without skimping on taste.

Low Fat Roasted Red Pepper Butter is a post from: CopyKat Recipes | Restaurant Recipes

Michael and I had bought a house out in the country. We had planted a monster garden, we had seven acres, and it was really hard to judge exactly how big our garden was. While growing up both of our parents had gardens, planting one yourself is different. I think we planted about 25 tomato plants, and a wide variety of other vegetables. In addition to what we planted there were all sorts of vegetable stands where we lived. Many times coming home from work, I would stop and pick up something fresh, and prepared it that night for dinner. Having lived in Houston, we didn’t really have seasons, but in Michigan we had seasons, and a whole host of fresh fruits and vegetables that I had not seen since growing up.

I canned spaghetti sauce, spaghetti sauce with meat, dill pickles, dill pickle relish, strawberry jam, blueberry preserves.  One day I when out picked peaches then spent the rest of the weekend canning them.  There was some irony there, I really don’t enjoy jams and jellies very much.  My favorite thing I canned was dill pickles.  These pickles were honestly some of the best dill pickles I had ever made.  These were wonderfully spicy.   I added crab boil to these pickles to give them extra flavor.

These dill pickles are ones that you actually ferment.  They take about three weeks to ferment, then it is time to can the pickles and get them ready for long term storage.  If you have never had the opportunity to try fermenting your own pickles, I highly recommend doing so.  You will have a flavor that is so dense, that you will want to ferment your own pickles again and again.

Spicy Dill Pickles

Yield: 6 quarts.

How to make homemade Spicy Dill Pickles is a post from: CopyKat Recipes | Restaurant Recipes

Products that Frustrate – Individually Wrapped Hot Dogs

Before I begin, let me say, I love hot dogs. When I go to Five Guys Burgers, I am often stumped, burger or a hot dog. We won’t even discuss why eating a hot dog is something we shouldn’t do too often, we know hot dogs aren’t always nutritionally viable, they are filled with preservatives, and often use cuts of meat that we wouldn’t ordinarily eat, but let’s face it. Hot dogs can be tasty, quite tasty in fact.

I was chatting with a fellow blogger, Jacki of Funny Not Slutty, a comedy website, and she mentioned these individually wrapped hot dogs. I have seen these advertised on TV and thought they were odd, and didn’t think twice about it. Today, I went to the grocery store for inspiration, and to pick up a few ingredients for my next copy cat recipe, and went over to the hot dog section and saw these.

So, hot dogs are not complicated to cook, many of us cook these in the microwave, or we may boil them in water, slice them open and grill them. Microwave cooking typically does not require fancy or exotic cookware, I personally would simply place a hot dog on a plate, and heat it up for 30 seconds, if I was in a neat mode, I would place a paper towel over my hot dog. Why must they be individually wrapped?

I am single, so for me, I can’t really eat a whole pack of hot dogs at once. So once I have had a couple of hot dogs out of a pack I will put them in either a baggie, or even a container and place them back into my fridge. Why as consumers should we pay for a company to wrap these up for us. Our husbands, our children, and most anyone that can fog a mirror can wrap an opened package of hot dogs to save them for another time.

I love hot dogs, I love that I can have dinner in 30 seconds, I do. I really do. Hot dogs are not complicated to prepare, and their storage is quite simple. Why on earth do we need individually wrapped hot dogs? Products like these frustrate me, because they cost much more than normal hot dogs, they have excessive packaging, and I don’t see a need for these. I would rather see a much more tasty hot dog in the space on the shelf to purchase.

Do you have products that frustrate you? What are the products that frustrate you?

Here are other products I don’t understand.
Pre-made UnSweet Tea
Pre packaged spice blends

Products that Frustrate – Individually Wrapped Hot Dogs is a post from: CopyKat Recipes | Restaurant Recipes

Products that frustrate – gallons of unsweetened tea

Some things are so simple to make, tea, even iced tea would be an example of a product that is very simple to make. To make tea you need some tea, boiling water, and 2 minutes for the tea to steep. You can even purchase cold tea bags that you don’t even need to boil water, and then let the tea steep. I know people that purchase pre-made tea on a regular basis, and I can’t help to ask them why.

There really are advantages to making your own tea, if you like it stronger, you will add an extra bag or two to the water as it steeps to make it extra strong. Maybe you like tea that isn’t so strong so you would add some additional water to the tea to make it less strong. By making your own tea you are drinking tea that hasn’t been made shelf stable with preservatives to keep it from fermenting. It also costs pennies, yes, pennies to make your own tea at home.

I understand that sometimes you may have a picnic and you may want to bring a gallon or two of this pre-made iced tea. I understand that if you are going to a pot luck dinner you may want to bring this to drink. Why would you buy this as a regular grocery store item? I want to cry out to people, please, make some iced tea, it isn’t difficult to do.

How to make Iced Tea

2 cups of boiling water
1 2 quart picture filled with ice
2 to 4 regular sized tea bags

Place tea bags into the 2 cups of boiling water, and allow to steep for 2 minutes. When tea is done steeping, remove bags, and pour tea over ice.

Folks, that’s it. You may make your tea differently, the folks at TeaGschwendner told me to make iced tea like this about 2 years ago, and I found that my tea tastes best when made like this. I also like to use loose tea when I can, but honestly plain old bags of Liptons, Tetley, or any other brand of tea bag is far superior to what you can buy in a plastic jug.

I am sure I will continue to roll my eyes when friends of mine purchase these jugs of swill. We will continue to have this conversation, I will offer to make them tea, and I will be turned down. If you have never made tea before, please, please give it a try, I promise, it is cheaper, and tastes better to make your own fresh tea.

Products that Frustrate – Gallons of Un-Sweet Tea is a post from: CopyKat Recipes | Restaurant Recipes