White Castle Stuffing?

OK, once in a great while I post a negative article about food. That would be the one that I wrote advising against a tortilla recipe I tried. It was an experiment contrasting tortilla and biscuit ingredients and processes, using an electric waffle-cone maker. Chewwwy!

The White Castle burger stuffing recipe caught my eye—more for the inspirational value for an article than inclination to make a batch. (Happy Thanksgiving day and weekend, everyone!)

Naw, I'd more make fun of the stuffing than make it or eat it. Before I launch into why the recipe tickles my fancy, a more positive thought about the product is that the name reminds me of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle", a very funny and entertaining movie. It was released in 2004 (!!), starring John Cho (Star Trek Sulu) and Kal Penn (House). Neil Patrick Harris, post-Doogie Howser and pre-How I Met Your Mother, portrays himself. It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but his gestures and verbalizing in one scene seems to be pre-Barney Stinson-ish in delivery.

I've never eaten a White Castle burger. In the distant past, I would have considered it, but I didn't live near any WC fooderies. By the time I saw any WC burgers in the frozen food sections, I lost interest in burgers, and any other kind of meat that's been processed to the point of nonrecognition. This type of meat includes sausage, pepperoni, salami, and hot dogs/baloney. I'm starting to approach the same feeling about round slices of deli meat. Not a vegetarian, Still very much a carnivore, and somewhat picky omnivore.

OK, let's get to the WC stuffing recipe! First of all—TEN burgers—no pickles. I gotta believe the people who came up with the recipe tried including the pickles and decided the result was a bust. I have a gut feeling the sodium is out of this world even without the pickles. In addition, the recipe calls for additional sodium in the form of chicken broth. The paper recipe calls for 1/4 cup of broth. (What, not enough flavor?) Oddly enough, the online recipe also calls for 1/4 cup, but it also includes text in the procedure itself to "add an additional 3/4 cup of chicken broth". Yow!

Alrighty then, the main reason the recipe attracted my attention for amusement. The ingredients made me think of prison food I'd read about awhile back—Nutraloaf, except unmolded. "Food As Punishment: Giving U.S. Inmates 'The Loaf' Persists" describes putting ingredients together, baking it, and feeding it to inmates who present disciplinary problems.

So the WC stuffing is not exactly a Nutraloaf—less sodium for one thing. It's supposed to be a pretty flavorless (tasteless?) loaf. I can visualize the WC stuffing baked in a brick form. I am mercifully omitting links to Nutraloaf recipes.

Zucchini Overflow?

Good harvest of zucchini lately? Gotten a bunch from people who have been harvesting them? An explanation for the overflow might be from wiseGEEK's "What is zucchini?" site. "Many markets carry this squash in the summer, and it is also a snap to grow at home, although some caution is advised, as the plants can produce way more fruit than one would think is physically possible."

A few times this month, a co-worker brought some gargantuan ones, and I've gleefully partaken of them, and passed on buying any in the store for awhile. I've grated or sliced these homegrown ones for recipes, or bagging and freezing after shredding and slicing, As of a week ago, I've baked two half batches of zucchini mini-muffins, varied by well shapes, and one batch of crustless ham-swiss-zucchini quiche.

For the next few articles, I'll publish three recipes for zucchini mini-muffins and one for the quiche.
The two half-batches of mini-muffins I baked last week had the same ingredients and baking time. The pans differed—aluminum round vs. silicone square—because I wanted to test my theory that one type of pan would yield moister results than the other pan.

My third batch of mini-muffins will again use the same ingredients, but the amount will be a 3/4-recipe batch, using both types of pans. I'll be using zucchini that I grated, froze, bagged, then let thaw. I'll not squeeze, as thawed zucchini is watery when squeezed.

I consider mini-muffin sizes to be a bit more appealing than regular cupcake size—more units that are available for distributing in a social environment. The amount of batter for making one cupcake-sized goodie is the same amount as for three mini-muffins. (At a potluck event, people can more easily pick up a small, self-contained morsel than commit to a larger item or something that requires slicing, particularly a pie.)

The Betty Crocker recipe has lots of details, including baking times for various pans. The Paula Deen recipe includes nutmeg, a spice I'd like to use in more recipes than I do. The most appealing reason I like these two 2-loaf recipes, besides relative ease of the process, is the even number of eggs. Making half-recipes is a lot easier when dividing four eggs than three eggs.

Some additional zucchini links:

• Zucchini History
• Vegetable Dictionary - Zucchini
• Zucchini nutrition facts
• My veggie pasta recipe, which calls for zucchini as one of the four veggies. (Other veggies are celery, carrots, and yellow squash--all 1/2-pounds each, and Salad-Shooter sliced.)

Shot Salad Shooter Slicing Cone

My Salad Shooter, by Presto, is a small appliance that I use nearly every week, sometimes a couple of times a week. I've had it for maybe 20 years. Mainly, I use it for slicing carrots and olives. Occasionally, I use it for slicing veggies, especially for my veggie pasta recipe. I use it for chopping nuts and peanuts for making cookies and fudge. I used it for grating cheese in the past, but have since discovered the pre-shredded kind, so I don't salad-shoot-shred cheese no mo'.
My slicing cone is worn out, with some "fractures" that threaten to totally break it, as shown in the outlined areas of the pixstrip. I've done some searches for part availability and bottom-line cost. I've gotten the impression that comparison shopping is more difficult than in the past. Companies might now be less willing to let a viewer see total cost before requiring form filling. I think it might be a psychological nudge so that the visitor invests time and energy into filling information, and might be more committed to purchasing the item. In my online travels for finding a reasonable-cost cone replacement, I stopped at Mending Shed, eBay, and Presto.
Mending Shed
Mendingshed.com has an appealing price $4.95, but the shipping is $11.26, bringing the total to $16.21. Decided to pass on it. Furthermore, their form gave me four different options, but when I chose the post office, the tally screen told me they use only UPS. Hmmm. They could have disclosed that info on the first screen.
eBay
I was amused at the number of listings for a USED slicing cone on eBay. Something I'm going to use on MY food. Really! Not!
Presto
The starting Presto page for buying the part looked simple enough. I even inferred that estimating the cost would be simple. Nooooooo! After I reached the contact info screen, I saw that I needed a user ID and password as part of the form fill-in. Well, I decided I'd just send an email and request the shipping cost info, using the Contact link. Even that effort required more than meets the eye.
The contact page showed that I could use the form to email, or call an 800 number, or send snail mail. As the customer service hours availability didn't coincide with my own availability, I chose to fill the form. What a surprise that the Name field displayed "optional." The reality was that clicking the submit button triggered a you-gotta-give-us-a-name message. OK, so I went ahead and put in something. (Bleah. I dislike places that use contact forms for collecting data.)
The autoreply message that I received stated that they "will be in contact with you within 3 business days." Sure seemed like a long time for waiting for a reply to an inquiry. I think some other companies might have fancier inquiry forms where a consumer can pick a certain topic so the company's system can funnel messages to more specific topic buckets.
Mercifully, Presto got back to me that afternoon. The shipping cost would be $2 for the cone for anywhere in US and Canada. Woohoo! I placed my order. Wouldn't you know, the shipping cost is $3. OK, so I'll write the customer rep after I get my cone. Seems they could improve the customer experience by enabling the customer to more easily find out shipping info, especially a good shipping rate. A couple of more incidentals: ETA is about two weeks, and sales tax goes on top of the part AND shipping.
If anything unusual or unexpected occurs between now and the time my cone arrives, I'll put an addendum to this article. (I want to publish NOW.)