I Wish I Was Tailgating

As I sit here on my couch this Saturday afternoon watching college football games from around the nation I can't help but think about how much I miss tailgating for games during my time at Indiana University.  Even though it was always exciting to out and support the championship contending Indiana Hoosiers it was more fun to hit the tailgate fields with your friends and have the only kind of party that is worth a damn at 8 am on Saturday morning.

There are 3 things that are important must haves for any tailgating experience: friends (preferrably one with a truck and or grill), booze, and some good outdoor eats.  For my circle of friends items 1 and 2 were never a problem, but I'll be quite honest our tailgate food left a little to be desired.  We mostly cooked cheap hamburgers and hotdogs.  They were good for soaking up the booze, but not much else.  Of course being in college that wasn't really where our priorities laid.

It's too bad none of us really get the chance to go tailgating any more.  After watching people that really do it up right I'd be ready to get out there and make some wings, ribs, sausages, sandwiches and desserts.  One of my friends has floated the idea of maybe buying a bus to set up for some awesome IU tailgating, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.  If it ever happens I'll be there ready to chow down...oh and drink some booze..plenty of booze.

Mac's---Sketchy but awesome

Today's post is a guest blog from my two co-workers Laura and Claire reviewing one of Muncie's more peculiar fast food stops.  Enjoy.

So if you have ever spent any time at all in Muncie then more than likely you have heard of Mac’s.  Mac’s has 3 Muncie locations...each in a building that used to be something else…like the location that we visited was an old Rax, so this is no chain restaurant.  Inside is very basic not much going on but maybe a few old timers in the corner drinking coffee and reminiscing about old times. On this visit we choose to drive thru, since it was breakfast time and we were on break from work. 

The Menu is very basic but not normal flair for a fast food joint.  You can get anything from Chicken Fried steak to Grilled Cheese to Beef Manhattan to a western omelet.  Since it was 9 am it was not a good time to order the Grilled cheese which is a favorite of ours. What we did order were things that you can’t get at a McDonald’s.  I, Laura, chose to go with the Veggie Omelet, which is of course egg, green peppers, onions and lots of melting cheese. The omelet combo comes with hash rounds and a biscuit. The Omelet is huge as you can see by the picture.  It is filled with a lot of veggies and cheese. The biscuits are made fresh and are moist yummy goodness. The hash rounds are your basic bag hash round but are perfectly cooked to have that nice crunchiness.

Also on the agenda were the French toast sticks.  I, Claire, happen to be something of a French toast fiend, and enjoy it in all of its forms.  The sticks come 5 to an order and are delightful pieces of crispy carbness.  They come with syrup for dipping which is good, but could be better if it was more maple-y.  In addition I enjoyed the Egg and cheese biscuit.  As you can see, Mac's biscuits are square, a bit on the dense side, unlike their fluffier counterparts found at other fast food stops.  This texture enables them to stay warm longer and crumble less, definite plus's in my book.  The egg is super thin and fresh and they do not have a problem with it not fitting completely on the biscuit.  It looked it may have been able to fly but I saw no problem with this.  Overall, a lot of yum for a little coin.

Taste: If we have to compare it to the Chain fast food restaurants then 8/10. The freshness of the food is a 10.  You can’t get the biscuits this fresh at other chains, plus the eggs are fresh and light as well as the veggies.

Value: 10/10. My (Laura) omelet combo was $3.99; I added a medium drink, so my total with tax was $5.92, a great value for the large amount I received.  For my counterpart, she had the French toast sticks and Egg and Cheese Biscuit for $3.87 with tax. YOU CAN’T BEAT THAT!!

Randomness: 10/10. This is a unique place, from the people that work there to its clientele, I mean where else can you go and have someone serve you that has summer teeth and piercings but it doesn’t matter because the food is great and so is the service!

Hardee's Hand-breaded Chicken Tenders or How I stopped worrying about bringing my lunch to work and started eating awesomeness

So a couple of days ago I found myself in a predicament that thrusts itself upon me from time to time.  I had brought my lunch, Thai peanut noodles(perhaps to be covered in a future blog), but I wasn't terribly interested in eating them when lunch time rolled around.  In the past in an effort to save money I have swallowed my pride in these matters and choked down whatever mediocre food item I had packed in my lunchbox plastic Wal-Mart bag of awesomeness.  However, on this particular day due to working some substantial overtime I had a little change in my pocket and I decided to go out for lunch.  Man am I glad I did.

I was in the mood for some tasty fried chicken.  KFC was out due to my personal vendetta against them(definitely to be covered on another day) and trying to access the McDonald's on  the other side of 82nd St at lunch time is more effort than I wanted to put in.  That left Hardee's and their new hand-breaded chicken tenders.  Much has been written about these on various other food blogs around the interwebs with mixed reviews, but my opinion being that Hardee's generally puts out a fairly high quality product I decided to try them out for myself.

The first thing I noticed was the cost.  The combo with 5 tenders, fries and a drink was around 7 bucks.  Even before tasting the food I thought this was more than reasonable and comparable to almost any other fast food restaurant's chicken tenders.  However, the thing that I simply could not believe was the quality of the product.  I decided to start this blog after having ate the meal so I apologize for not having a picture, but the tenders were quite sizable, juicy, and fresh in both taste and the amount of time they spent out of the fryer before being served.  The color was a nice golden brown and the breading was light and crispy being more similar to KFC's Original Recipe than the frozen strips that you would get at someplace like DQ or Arby's.  This allowed for the juiciness of the chicken to come through more.  I chose to dip these in their honey mustard sauce, but even if they had forgot to put the sauce in the bag it still would have been a tasty meal.  The bottom line...Hardee's promises in their commercials that their chicken tenders will taste better than their fast food competitors' because Hardee's are fresh and not frozen.  I wholeheartedly agree.

Taste:  If I'm comparing with other fast food joints these are a 9 or 10 on scale of 10.  If I compare them to most fast causual places they probably still rate an 8  or 9 only losing points because of the smaller portion size.
Value:  10/10.  I was fuller, more satisfied and no lighter in the wallet if I had bought a comparable product.
Randomness:  7/10 It wasn't exactly fried chicken bought out of some guys trunk in a gas station parking lot, but come on it's Hardee's.  Most people probably don't even know they still exist as a chain.