Chicken Salad Recipe or The Unhealthiest Salad Ever

Okay Sarah Anne, you were so close to a decent thing with your Past E Fagiolio Soup - A balanced meal with a large representation from the vegetable segment of the food pyramid with the correct pairing of beef stock with the meat aspect (though I would question the use of ground beef in a soup as opposed to beef chunks). However, true to your nature as a one-third representative of the Meal Planning Mommies your true colors come shining through- glistening with the oily sheen of mayonnaise emanating from every pore contained within your misguided body.

Worse still is the fact that not only are these women unable to come up with a decent meal on their own, but they also speak the praises of the unhealthiest recipes that pass through the trans fat encrusted lips of their gaping maws. This day's culprit: Chicken Salad Recipe.

So much is wrong with this recipe that I don't know where to begin. The health aspect? The convenient omissions? The glaring inadequacy of the ingredients used? You know what, let's tackle this maelstrom of meal planning malevolence in that specific order.

I'm sure that at some point between the Triassic and Cretaceous period the great herbivoric dinosaurs of the time looked at each other during their time of feeding and agreed that the obvious missing element in their proto-salad diet was a healthy dollop of mayonnaise. Not just a measured portion of mayonnaise mind you, rather enough of the stable emulsion of eggs and oil to ensure that the inevitably ingested insect can freely slide from esophagus to anus without the threat of slowdown from contact friction.

One cup of mayo for a sandwich? I mean come on, I know you're into saving as much time a possible with your "busy" schedule- but is it really necessary to give your family their yearly allocation of the unhealthiest of condiments in a single serving?

Secondly, although I'm not really a fan of chicken salad (at all) I know the classic recipe calls for a balance of ingredients to create a thin veil of saladness. So what does the moron in question decide to do? Cut out the only vegetable-like thing in the damn recipe. Great call there Sarah Anne- surely you could make up for that decision by adding a touch of green food coloring to your next batch and declare it instantly healthy.

Lastly there's a systemic problem with this and other recipes that needs to be addressed: where the hell do these women get such low quality ingredients? Canned chicken and grapes which are so large their flavor is diluted to the point of bite-sized green ice cubes? Seriously, take the time to do your sale shopping and get quality ingredients- even the worst of your inevitably atrocious recipes will have some semblance of... actually I take that back. Given kobe beef and caviar I'm sure you'd slather on the italian dressing, bacon, and cream of mushroom soup and declare it some sort of family-style stew. Just... put down the can opener, turn off the stove, and donate your kitchen to someone who knows what to do with it.

Time to enjoy the tasty meal located deep within my happy body. Final rating on the MPM fail scale: 8.6

Crock-Pot Taco Chili or Wait, you can screw up chili?

Imagine if you will the scene: Wide open Texan plains - Late 1800s. A Tuesday. Dusk. A group of cowboys have just finished a long day of cattle herding and are looking forward to a good meal to consume from the comfort of a warm campfire. An aged weather-worn cook is preparing an extra large serving of hearty chili to rejuvenate himself and his compadres over stories of days long past with a serving of hard whiskey.

The group situates themselves in a half circle and ladle up a heaping bowl full of the aromatic goodness and dig in. However, something about the meal just doesn't sit right with Dusty. The spoon full of the foodstuff coating the inside of his gaping maw is off- something is missing. Somewhere deep within Dusty's quickly firing synapses two neurons make that vital electro-chemical connection resulting in a memory bubbling to the surface of awareness culminating in realization. In uncontrollable anger Dusty raises to his feet and glares at the cook.

"If I've warned you once I've warned you a thousand times. Chili at its core is defined by the goddamn water chestnuts and almond slivers! What do you think we are, vermin?!"

With a flick of the wrist Dusty draws his sidearm and in a flash the cook lies dead. None of the other cowboys think Dusty to be in the wrong. After all, what is chili without the fucking nuts? And don't even get them started on the missing olives...

End Scene.

Now, hopefully that the over the top scene illustrates just what's wrong with the Crock-Pot Taco Chili. Chili is defined by the combination of several simple ingredients, and the proportions of these ingredients with simple spices brew up a wonderful concoction that teases the tastebuds with both flavor and heat. Whoever came up with the idea of adding olives and nuts to a batch of chili is just as nutty as the two offending ingredients. (Bad joke, but it's late... have mercy. (End Full House reference.)) Not only that, but technically this isn't chili- It's tacos without the shells (hard or soft depending on your personal preference).

Let's move on though shall we? This meal is supposed to be easy right? Just toss all the shit in the crock pot and go. The only problem with this easy recipe is that it requires precooking the ground beef before hand. So instantly this recipe is graduated from a "just a crock pot meal" to "just a crock pot and one pan" meal.  Oh, what a tangle web of lies we weave with these Meal Planning Mommies and Pals.

Anyway, I'm tired after a long day of working- which is another reason why this meal doesn't work for anyone with a family of working parents. Cook for 4 hours? On a weekday? So which parent is going to take off of work at noon to drive home in order to put this crap-in-a-pot together? Not me that's for sure. I'd rather give an easy 20 minutes of prep time after a long day of working to prepare something fresh and delicious instead of a bowl of sodium con carne.

I'm done.

MPM Fail Scale Rating: π (3.14159...)

Sarah's Cheesy Ham and Potatoes or Clusterfuck in a Bowl

Okay, so we're already a day behind keeping up with the emerging disasters at Meal Planning Mommies, and although a small novelette can be written about the wretch-inducing Krista's Chicken Pot Pie. today we will be focusing on the most recent atrocity Sarah's Cheesy Ham and Potatoes.

First let's look at the mindset behind this dish. Notice the title and check out the order of precedence: Cheese, ham, then potatoes. So the dish is really just a ham and cheese sandwich but substituting potatoes for the bread. No doubt it was conceived somewhere along the lines of "You know what I like? Cheese! Hmm, what else do we have? Oh, HAM! But wait, I can't serve that to my family and call it a full meal... I'll just fill it out with some crap-ass processed potato like product. But then it's just plain not healthy. Oh, I'll toss an onion in there and some cream of something and declare myself a chef. See? I opened a can therefore I cooked."

Now, going by the directions it's clear that the idiot doesn't just like cheese- they fucking LOVE CHEESE! I mean really, cheese makes up almost 80% of this recipe by weight. Cream cheese. Monterey Jack cheese. Still more cheddar cheese on top?! I mean, for the love of God why not just skip everything, appeal to your true desires, and inject freshly melted velveta cheese directly into your heart's right ventricle. For reals, if someone served this to me I would immediately assume they were trying to kill me and respond in kind with an offer of fried lard on a stick.

Here's a hint people: If you're cooking anything that requires cream-of-anything you are doing something wrong.  The condensing of any food's flavors should be done in pan/pot by the controlled release of the target's moisture levels. This condensed shit that the Campbell's Cookbook tries to sell you is nothing more than the cheap vegetable they couldn't put in their soups cooked in waste cream and sold to you for 15 cents for pure profit. Case in point: You know what isn't appetizing? This:

Then the idiot really burns my ass. I quote "This would probably be great for a brunch meal as well!" Let me be frank: Horseshit! We live in the birthplace of brunch, we host a brunch with our friends every year, and if anyone served this crap they would be drawn, quartered, pan blackened, and sold to Yankees as a "cajun delicacy". Brunch is not just a meal between breakfast and lunch- There are rules that govern what foods should and should not be served and this definitely breaks any and all rules related to brunch and human decency.

So all in all the meal is a complete and utter failure, but then we are treated with the moron's inability to properly wield themselves in a kitchen. After making 4 batches of this stuff they are left with a kitchen in shambles:

Cut up an onion and put it aside. You mix shit in a bowl 4 times and bag it. If you can't follow those directions without the need of a broom then I would highly suggest you rethink your ability to pack for vacation, drive, or breathe without soiling yourself. As an example this past weekend my wife and I prepared four separate dishes simultaneously (Jambalaya, spaghetti sauce, bread, and potato soup) in a kitchen only about 6 feet of counter space with no more than 5 minutes cleanup which did not require a broom. Such people who complain about their plight are nothing more than laughably inept and should not be entrusted with anything more than an easy bake oven and a paring knife.

This meal on the MPM fail scale: 8.2

The resultant mess from this meal on the MPM fail scale: 9.3

Jen's Spicy Sausage Pasta or I'm Too Lazy To Open a Can

So, as it turns out the Meal Planning Mommies are going to make it easy for us today by not only introducing a disgusting dish containing both elements of faux cheese and faux sausage, but also indicating just how helplessly lazy they are. Case in point: Jen's Spicy Sausage Pasta.

Okay, so lets dive right into things. I'll give a pass for the use of turkey sausage over regular sausage- The health benefits saved by using turkey sausage far outweigh the risks involved with consuming regular pork sausage, kielbasa, or andouille on a regular basis. In fact, at Casa de Us we use it on a regular basis- After one or two meals you get over the fact that the meat in question tastes more like a hot dog than the comforting taste of ground pork fat and spices contained withing an intestinal casing.

However, the recipe instantly dissolves into a clusterfuck of disgusting ingredients with the introduction of both Colby-Jack cheese and Italian Dressing. I'll admit it, I like colby-jack cheese but only with the understanding that it's a guilty pleasure that I would not force upon anyone whose company I enjoyed. Yes, I will gladly pick the little morsels of marbled goodness off of a cheese tray as some misguided party, but let's face the facts: This cheese is likely the combination of two disparate varieties of cheese which were not of optimum enough quality to be classified as their intended cheeses. In short: The crappy colby cheese has been stuffed with filler sub-prime monterey jack and sold to unsuspecting purchasers as some magical new variety. Hey, did you hear that I just invented a new cheese? It's called Ghouda-Cheeze Whiz. It's fucking amazing!

And what the hell is up with the Italian Dressing? You know what salad dressing is great with? Salads! You what it's disgusting with? Anything other than a fucking salad! Use of salad dressing in any recipe that what is not at least 95% vegetables is the layman's way of saying "I want to season this dish but I have no idea how to wield my spice rack of salt, pepper, and Emeril's premixed BAM pixie dust into anything remotely tasty." Here's the fact: If you use salad dressing in a recipe you're going to only going to end up with and end product whose consistency is that of the bodily product of a head cold.

Then the moron has the gall to mix these unholy ingredients together into a clusterfuck which indeed resembles the visual and textual products of the malady referenced above:

Now, what makes this meal "Special" is the fact that its ingredients are meant to be "OMG FROZEN IN ADVANCE TO SAVE TIME!!!" So let's get this straight: You precook the already precooked sausage, cut up cheese, open a can of tomatoes, and pour in salad dressing. Now, when it comes time to cook this all you have to defrost the entire bag- oh, and cook the pasta. Now total time saved is:

1. Cut up sausage: 1 minute. 2 minutes if you've never seen a knife before.
2. Cut up cheese: Same as above.
3. Open a can: Maximum 1 minute when blindfolded and wearing mittens.
4. Pouring dressing: 30 seconds depending on the daily value of gravity.

Wow, you saved 5 minutes- You know, those five minutes that it's going to take for your pasta water to boil in the first place. Only now your ingredients are likely freezer burned due to your inevitable mispackaging of the bag after sitting in the freezer for months under that oft used bag of pizza rolls. Oh, and since you're using cheese in place of an actual sauce I can assure you that cleanup is going to take at least 3 times longer than if you had prepared the meal proper in the first place. No thanks mom, I think I'm gonna pass on this meal.

Final rating of this meal on the newly minted MPM Fail Scale: 7

The post that started it all

The date was March 13, 2009- The Meal Planning Mommies has just posted the last straw. Their meal featured a supposed taco salad at which the mere sight caused innumerable gags across the face of this great planet. Having had enough I took it upon myself to post a comment to express my disgust. Within mere hours I found the comments were removed, and upon reposting them I found them once again removed with any further comments requiring the approval of moderators.

Seeing as how my comments will likely not see the light of day from this point forward I shall preserve them here for future generations.

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You know, I really hate to be like this- but that stuff looks downright disgusting. If a spouse, friend, coworker, head of state, celebrity chef, wild gibbon, or aquatic monster offered this to me as an acceptable meal I do believe the situation would devolve into fisticuffs for the betterment of all humanity.

As long as we're being completely honest here I'm going through your archives and I think the same can be said for over 90% of what is so oft described as "meals". Granted, the bear bread was a groovy idea

I'm sorry, but anyone and their family who realistically classifies sloppy joes, hotdogs, or that horrendous breakfast casserole as "Tasty green" is going to have a serious nutrition imbalance soon or in the near future.

Seriously- The amount of processed foods that are listed here is nothing more than a testament to the fattening of America as a whole. All I'm saying is this: spend a lot more time in the produce section, cut down on your processed/boxed foods, and for the love of God stop combining foods which were never meant to share a shopping basket let alone a cooking vessel.

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Okay, so it turns out that I'm not done yet. I've gone back a little deeper into your archives and I have to ask: Have any of you ever even handled a chicken breast? How about a cut of fish that does not also contain the words stick, fried, or microwave-ready? Ever realized that pork can be consumed without sitting between the halved portions of the overly-processed blog staple the hot dog bun?

Oh, and don't give me any such excuse about costs- on a per-pound basis if you shop the sales correctly you can get these "treats" for much less than that 80% gristle that shows up so much in these posts.

If you really want to give your family some sort of variety step out of this ground beef corner you've backed yourselves into. Buy a red bell pepper, learn to make a roux, and enjoy the value (both monetary and culinary) of your local farmer's market. The simple fact is cooking well costs less and takes just as little time to prepare.

Oh, and if the kids won't eat what you prepare maybe it's time to let them go hungry. After all, you're the parent- a day of two of their hungry complaints and I assure you they will come around.

New to our blog? Start Here!

Welcome to our Meal Planning Morons! We are a group of individuals who follow the Meal Planning Mommies blog out of a sense of both wonderment and disgust.

Let me explain: The blog in question represents everything that is wrong with the culinary state of the American family. The meals which this trio subject their families to can be best described as a hopeless fusion of general laziness wth a complete lack of culinary knowledge. At worst the planned meals should be described a nutritional timebombs which will only lead to deadened tastebuds, high colesterol, and increased blood pressure.

Since the powers that be of said blog do not allow comments which disagree with their developed sense of self-brilliance we have chosen to take the more public approach and set up a counter blog. So follow along with us as we desconstruct the meals put forth by this trio of self aggrandizing morons until the task no longer amuses us.