Episode 5/Transcription

Kevin: This podcast recorded in front of a live studio beagle. Here we are, once again; it is... the fifth time we've done this?
Ursula: Yes, and it is 10/10/10, and -- well, it's 8:41, so if we were recording this at ten o'clock that would be clever of us, but we are not.
Kevin: Yeah, we're getting started a little late this evening, but that's all right. 
Ursula: Yes, I've been feeling violently ill all day, so even though I feel better now there's an excellent chance that the food will not only encompass the question "is it cheap?" and "is it edible?", but "will it make Ursula projectile vomit?"
Kevin: And we're hoping to avoid that.
Ursula: Yes.
Kevin: Before we go any further I should remind you, this is Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap, sponsored by our new sponsor, Monoceros Media.
Ursula: Monoceros Media, they are a printing company, among other things they do printing for artists, they have done the banner for -- that I use at conventions, and it's really very good quality --
Kevin: Yes it is.
Ursula: -- and I'm not just saying that 'cause they sent us a rice cooker, I would say that anyway, it's very good, it has the nice little grommets so you can lash it to the table in a high wind and things.
Kevin: And check out the Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap webpage for a link to Monoceros Media for your printing, your artistic needs, they can do some really cool stuff, especially with the laser engraver. We'll maybe talk about that and include a picture or two a little later.
Ursula: You remember the olden days, when a webpage was not something you could just throw together in twenty minutes, and it was like... you know, webpages were a sign that something had been around for a while? Now we can do a podcast and we can have a webpage in thirty seconds if we so choose, it's very bizarre.
Kevin: It's been -- it's interesting. It might not look very good, but the production values on the webpage equal the production values on the podcast.
Ursula: That's a lie, they're slightly better on the webpage.
Kevin: Fair enough. So what are we eating this week?
Ursula: Well, this week we are eating, and I am trying to keep down, Trader Joe's Chicken Gorgonzola, which is from the frozen food aisle; it bills itself as "Fully cooked chicken breasts with rib meat, topped with portobello mushrooms, diced tomatoes, and a gorgonzola cheese sauce."
Kevin: It's in the microwave right now because it takes a while to cook and we figured the eight minutes that that's cooking, we could talk to you and wait for it to finish and that way we're ahead.
Ursula: Also I'm a little annoyed by the fact there isn't an "and" between portobello mushrooms and diced tomatoes, because a comma is not working it grammatically, so once again we are going to have to dock them points for grammar.
Kevin: Right. What else are we eating this week?
Ursula: *laughs* This week the other instant food for the less culinarily skilled among us is -- oh, this one's bargain basement. This is the Archer Farms, that's Target's house brand of food that -- 'cause they don't wanna put Target Food on there 'cause that would make you think it was cheap. "Tasty food, tasty price! Asian Inspired Sesame Teriyaki Lunch Bowl."
Kevin: Now, I'm already a little nervous about that by the words Asian Inspired.
Ursula: I'm a little nervous by the fact it cost a buck ninety-nine.
Kevin: Okay, that's fair.
Ursula: The chicken gorgonzola I believe was four-something, I could be wrong, I didn't keep track. The intermediate-level thing we are reviewing this week is extremely cheap, for $2.99 you can get a bag of Vigo Red Beans and Rice, "Authentic New Orleans recipe". 
Kevin: Now, here's the great thing about this. The Vigo -- I'm going to start talking about the intermediate, 'cause there are a couple ways to do it. Number one is to, you know, follow the stovetop instructions, which I have done, which involve a saucepan and boiling and maybe a little margarine, and if you don't stir it often enough you have a burnt layer of toasted broken rice and beans across the bottom of this pan that it will take about an hour to scrub off.
Ursula: It's not that easy to make on a saucepan, I have to say.
Kevin: The microwave directions are pretty straightforward, but it's microwaved rice and we know how that comes out, usually a little... tacky. Crunchy. I can't think of the right word.
Ursula: Al dente?
Kevin: Al dente, perfect!
Ursula: Not in a good way.
Kevin: Not in a good way. What was fortunate is I said, you know, I have this rice cooker, I have this bag of red rice and beans, I said, um...
Ursula: I have no motivation to do anything for dinner.
Kevin: That's right. So following some instructions I found on the web -- yes, scary thing that it was -- I put in the rice and beans and about double the amount of water, so this was like, I think this came out to like one and a half, or no, it was a half cup more of water. So this turned out to be one and a half cups of rice and beans and seasoning, and I added two cups of water to that, put it in the rice cooker, pushed the Go button for regular rice -- and this is a fancy rice cooker, it does all kinds of fun things --
Ursula: But it doesn't have a red-beans-and-rice setting.
Kevin: It does not have a red beans and rice setting.
Ursula: It does have a porridge setting! It was invented in Japan.
Kevin: It was -- yes, it's a very nice Japanese model. And -- but then came back after it sang its little song, it has a little song it will sing, it will sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Sock-- Little Star" when it starts and when it stops --
Ursula: That's 'cause it's Japanese, again.
Kevin: Yeah. But, came back when it was ready and it was awesome. 
Ursula: I have to say though, our washing machine also sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so -- it might have been made in Japan but I think it's a General Electric, so I got nothin'.
Kevin: I think it's just a -- that they -- no, no, the washer-dryer's -- it's not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and it's an Amana, but it may just be that there's one chip with one song, or two chips with two songs, or whatever.
Ursula: It goes -- does a little *sings* "dingly dingly dingly bop!"
Kevin: Yes, but that's not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is *sings* "deet-deet deet-deet deet-deet dee"...
*beeping in background*
Kevin: That on the other hand is the microwave.
Ursula: Tune in next week for Kevin and Ursula Sing Badly.
Kevin: Well, there you go. Anyway, we did this in the rice cooker and it came out absolutely fantastic for --
Ursula: Where is my damn potholder?
Kevin: I don't know where your potholder is. Uh, what was I talking about?
Ursula: Rice. Cooker.
Kevin: Rice, yes! Talking about rice in the rice cooker.
Ursula: It would have been even better with sausage.
Kevin: It would've been better with sausage in the rice cooker, it was excellent in the rice cooker, I like this stuff on a stovetop too, it's really not that hard, and for the price is actually really good.
Ursula: $2.99, you can feed two adults.
Kevin: At least.
Ursula: And they have to be hungry.
Kevin: True. Very very true.
Ursula: Okay, I am letting this stand for one to two minutes before serving, so --
Kevin: Okay --
Ursula: -- I'm gonna start on our terrifying sesame teriyaki noodle bowl.
Kevin: The terrifying sesame-- bleah, ses-a-me, sesame sesame sesame-sesame-sesame-sesame-- 
Ursula: Open Sesame.
Kevin: Open Sesame? Okay. Open Sesame. Um, the fun thing about the rice cooker, while she's doing that, is -- again, it has the porridge setting, and our sponsor Monoceros Media who sent us this beautiful piece of rice-cookery machinery said, you know what, for the perfect oatmeal, go get the Pinhead oats, here's a couple of instructions we've found, set it up the night before and set the timer with the porridge setting, and when you get up in the morning you will have hot oatmeal waiting for you. And no lie, it was probably some of the best oatmeal I've had. Definitely the easiest, because it was pour oats, pour water, push button, walk away until morning. But the texture wasn't quite what... Ursula's...
Ursula: It was Pinhead oatmeal, I'm a little picky, I don't like grits either.
Kevin: Fair.
Ursula: I should make a point about the Archer Farms Sesame Teriyaki Bowl -- unlike every other thing, you add the seasoning packet here first. You put the seasoning packet in the water, stir until dissolved, and then add noodles.
Kevin: Okay, so, seasoning first, then noodles, instead of noodles then seasoning, let me see the noodle packet here--
Ursula: Aah! I opened it already 'cause I needed to read the directions, I--
Kevin: Aah! Aah! Okay. Yeah, it's, um...
Ursula: Now there are noodles on the floor.
Kevin: Are they -- no, there are not noodles on the floor, I did not tilt my wrist in a way that would spill the noodles. Surprisingly. 
Ursula: Filmed before a live studio audience.
Kevin: That's right, except -- and the beagle would be cleaning up. These are some very interesting-looking noodles, 'cause it's not your usual brick of instant noodles that you find, it's --
Ursula: They are dried, they are not the sort of squooshy kind that --
Kevin: Yeah, they're definitely, it's definitely a bag of dried loose noodles, and they are not standard ramen noodles --
Ursula: Um...
Kevin: Wh-what's um?
Ursula: Well, it says to stir this until dissolved, but... it's awfully chunky. I don't think I'm gonna be able to dissolve some of these things.
Kevin: I think some of that's mushroom.
Ursula: Okay? This looks like -- this basically looks like something you'd sweep up off the kitchen floor, minus the dog hair in our case --
Kevin: And cat hair.
Ursula: And cat hair. It's mostly the dog, dude, that border collie sheds, I swear to god...
Kevin: Well, he does.
Ursula: He's a good dog.
Kevin: He is a good dog. He's nowhere to be found right now, too busy herding the cats.
Ursula: There's some--
Kevin: Oh, wow, it smells of garlic, so there's definitely garlic in there.
Ursula: All right, I'm gonna assume this is dissolved, 'cause I think without like a Bunsen burner I'm not gonna get it to dissolve --
Kevin: Bunsen burner, perhaps a mill to grind it up with -- now you need noodles?
Ursula: Sure, let's try that.
Kevin: All right, noodles. The noodles are very plain, they're actually better than your average dry ramen -- okay, let's face it. How many of you've been in a hurry, I've been in this much of a hurry, and just said you know what, I don't have time to cook this, you've grabbed the Coke or whatever, you've grabbed the ramens, and you've hopped in the car and you've eaten, you've just crunched down on that brick of noodles raw, followed by swigs of Coke or Dr Pepper or whatever?
Ursula: I have never done this and I am judging you right now.
Kevin: Judge me all you want. So, I know the taste of raw, crunchy, traditional brick-o-ramen; those are actually better than your traditional raw crunchy brick-o-ramen, at least dry.
Ursula: While it is cooking, we are going to embark on the Trader Joe Chicken Gorgonzola, which has now stood for one to two minutes before serving.
Kevin: Hmm! It's been in a -- it's got a plastic wrap on it, ooh! 
Ursula: It's got one of those crappy plastic wraps that they did that like breaks apart the minute you try to pull on it.
Kevin: Yyyes, and it's breaking apart.
Ursula: We hate it, and we're getting a knife.
Kevin: Yes. Um--
Ursula: No, we're using a fork.
Kevin: Fork! Fork!
Ursula: *stabbing plastic wrap* Die, you f-- Hah!
Kevin: Wow! All right. 
Ursula: You thought you were smarter than I was, plastic wrap, and possibly you were correct.
Kevin: All right, can you -- would you get a second fork, so I can... do that as well? Let's see, it, um... kinda greenish. Is it basil-y or something?
Ursula: Um--
Kevin: Let me take a picture of this. Again, it does not look like the packaging.
Ursula: No, the packaging has lots of red things. 
Kevin: Red things! That would be the, um... supposed tomatoes.
Ursula: Yes.
Kevin: Yes, the supposed tomatoes.
Ursula: They're sort of squashy...
Kevin: Squashy?
Ursula: Squashy orange in actuality and covered with green.
Kevin: Covered with green, what's the green supposed to be?
Ursula: Probably the gorgonzola cheese sauce?
Kevin: Okay. 
Ursula: I don't see it gets any other options. It's very... oily, it's sitting in a bath of oil. This -- it might look more like the menu if we took the breasts out of the bath of oil and put them on a plate.
Kevin: Fair. Yes, that's very, very oily.
Ursula: Are we feeling that ambitious?
Kevin: I'unno. First, I'm gonna try one of the mushrooms. ...The mushrooms are okay. Are you gonna be able to -- here, let's... do we need a knife for this?
Ursula: Yes, this is actual --
Kevin: *yelps*
Ursula: Well, if you just grab one end with a fork and I grab with the other we can tear it into pieces like caveman style.
Kevin: Yeah, it'll shred like -- yeah. Let's see. I will let you expound upon the flavor or whatever while I... taste. Confusing?
Ursula: It's... oily. 
Kevin: Buttery. Garlicky.
Ursula: All I'm gettin' is garlic.
Kevin: That's garlic.
Ursula: I mean I like garlic, but... 
Kevin: Mhm.
Ursula: I'm not getting like much taste of chicken or tomato...
Kevin: Maybe it was garlic I was smelling and not this. Hmm. *hums*
Ursula: It's really wet. 
Kevin: Mhm.
Ursula: The whole thing is extremely wet.
Kevin: Oh! Of course, it's oily, the -- the cheese. The fat in the cheese. In the cheese sauce. I'm tasting a hint of cheese.
Ursula: I am not really tasting gorgonzola, though. 
Kevin: Here, I'll...
Ursula: Thank you.
Kevin: Yeah, I'll hold while you...
Ursula: Collaborative food-tearing.
Kevin: There we go.
Ursula: This is how the monkeys did it.
Kevin: Ook, ook.
Ursula: It's visually really unappealing, I gotta say, it --
Kevin: Maybe if it weren't in the bath of sauce.
Ursula: Yeah, if you put it out on a plate and like... and... 
Kevin: Hmm.
Ursula: ...you know, lit the room dimly?
Kevin: I'm pretty sure that this is generic chicken breast number five, covered in sauce. There's nothing special about the chicken, that it was just a grilled chicken breast, mass-produced as they are wont to do.
Ursula: I don't think these are portobellos, I think they're those little brown baby-bellos.
Kevin: No, texture's not quite right. They could be baby portobellos.
Ursula: I don't know. I mean, they're probably cheap portobellos.
Kevin: Ah, cheap, cheap would be, yeah.
Ursula: I mean, we're asking a lot for five bucks.
Kevin: We are --
Ursula: And eight minutes.
Kevin: Five bucks and eight minutes... all right, maybe. 
Ursula: If you gave it a side dish and if you drained it out and took it out of the oil bath it is sitting in --
Kevin: Put the sauce on the side, maybe? For dipping?
Ursula: I wonder how it would be with like noodles or rice or something that could absorb the sauce and make some use of it.
Kevin: I don't know. 
Ursula: But it's...
Kevin: I mean, the chicken breast is moist, it's not dried-out microwave chicken breast --
Ursula: ...it's actually quite a good chicken breast, I will give it that. Texturally it is quite good.
Kevin: Yeah.
Ursula: The -- visually it looks kinda like rotting flesh.
Kevin: It does not look like rotting flesh.
Ursula: It's flesh with little reddish chunks and lots of green goo dripping off of it, it totally looks like rotting flesh.
Kevin: Eh, I guess you've seen more rotting flesh than I have, so.
Ursula: Sadly, yes, probably so.
Kevin: Probably, yeah. 
Ursula: I mean, you notice I'm still eating it despite the appearance.
Kevin: Yeah, I noticed, you're just chowing down. 
Ursula: Well, apparently I'm hungry in addition to being nauseated, I don't know.
Kevin: Hmm. After you chomped down some soup earlier. Well, the soup wa--
Ursula: Lemme just review, Wolfgang Puck's Chicken and Dumpling canned soup? There were two dumplings. They were approximately the size of a dime. Wolfgang Puck, I am disappointed in you and your soup, that was not chicken dumpling. That was chicklen sans dumpling.
Kevin: On the flip side, I was saying, you know, there's probably a can of the stuff on the West Coast that has two chunks of potatoes and someone is yelling because they were expecting potato dumpling chicken soup, they got like all the dumplings and two potatoes, instead of two dumplings and like a dozen potatoes.
Ursula: *from microwave* I am removing the Archer Farms.
Kevin: All right.
Ursula: "Sauce will continue to thicken while standing." It doesn't say how long it's supposed to stand, it just informs me of this.
Kevin: I guess until -- you let it stand until it's thick enough for your liking.
Ursula: Maybe. It says "Caution, bowl will be hot."
Kevin: Okay.
Ursula: I don't think they're lying, the bowl is hot.
Kevin: Is it thick?
Ursula: I can't get the lid off. ...It's ugly, is what it is.
Kevin: All right, bring it on over. Not many of these foods are visually appealing, I'm finding. The red beans and rice was visually appealing.
Ursula: Well, I mean, for dark brown stuff, but seriously. You cook some smoked sausage, you throw it in there, that would be a treat.
Kevin: Well...
Ursula: I don't think it's the worst-looking thing we've eaten.
Kevin: I've -- no, it's nowhere near the worst-looking thing we've eaten. 
Ursula: What was the worst-looking thing we've eaten?
Kevin: At this point? 
Ursula: I gotta say, the chicken boob was not terribly thrilling.
Kevin: The chicken boob was not terribly thrilling. This is -- this may require a... spoon. Thing. 'Cause I'm trying to pick up -- the noodles are very small, and trying to pick them up with a fork results in a lot of noodles falling off. The thauce -- the sauce is thickening. Stir a little bit... thank you very much. You get to hear our silverware clatter on the table.
Ursula: Any odd chirping in the background you hear, by the way, is the fact that it is a spectacular fall evening and we have the windows open, we have tons of crickets out there, so if you were wondering what that noise is.
Kevin: Okay, it's hot, you'll want to blow on that.
Ursula: Kevin has the expression of a man who just singed his palate badly and pretty soon it will do that thing where the --
Kevin: -- ooh, the peeling.
Ursula: Yeah, and it comes off in the big nasty rags of... icky.
Kevin: Yeah, it's never fun. Hm. I didn't taste anything more than, like, bell pepper that time.
Ursula: It tastes like crap.
Kevin: Yeah.
Ursula: I'm gonna go with that, it's -- it is exactly what you pay for, possibly less. It is noodles and soy sauce.
Kevin: Yeah.
Ursula: And not high-quality noodles or high-quality soy sauce. I have to s--
Kevin: There's a sweet undertone, just a -- that must be the "Asian Inspired" quality -- where's the packaging on this?
Ursula: No, I'm pretty sure that's the high fructose corn syrup.
Kevin: Oh god, it's got high fructose corn syrup in it?
Ursula: It's a food, of course it has high fructose corn syrup in it, I don't know what world you live in where everything doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it.
Kevin: I'm trying. No, it has real sugar in it.
Ursula: Oh. Wow. Okay, I -- we commend them for using real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup.
Kevin: What kind of -- okay --
Ursula: Nevertheless, it's crap.
Kevin: "Sugar..."
Ursula: Wow, I'm not -- I'm going back to the chicken and gorgonzola.
Kevin: Wow, this is kind of --
Ursula: I wouldn't give this to the nine-year-old.
Kevin: Eight.
Ursula: Eight-year-old, whatever he is.
Kevin: "Maltodextrin, sugar, salt, sugar, cornstarch, evaporated sugarcane..."
Ursula: My God.
Kevin: "...soy sauce powder," that's, how many sugars did they put in this thing, but they avoided high fructose corn syrup, so I give them a point. Oh, I see, that's the sugar that's in the teriyaki sauce, the teriyaki sauce is what's giving it that vaguely Asian undertone. Why am I belching? That was a very oniony belch.
Ursula: Probably the gorgonzola.
Kevin: Probably the gorgonzola.
Ursula: This brings us to another public safety announcement. IF you have the red beans and rice, both you and your loved one should eat it. It is not fair to the other party to destroy them in the night with methane poisoning if they are not also reciprocating.
Kevin: I will say in fairness that I do worry that someday there will be a newspaper story where "Children's Book Author and Companion Die Due To Suffocation" because we've had too many bean dishes in one week.
Ursula: You can tell that, uh--
Kevin: Honeymoon's over.
Ursula: -- that a couple -- well, that the honeymoon is over but that they are genuinely in love by whether or not they are willing to fart on one another and laugh. Or that may just determine you're a teenage boy, I'm not actually sure.
Kevin: We're definitely teenagers in that respect. Yeah, well--
Ursula: I can't believe you're still eating that, man, that's like --
Kevin: Well, you're bogarting the chicken.
Ursula: You're -- here, have the chicken! I would not condemn anyone to the --
Kevin: It was -- there, no, that was --
Ursula: That was pretty poor.
Kevin: That's somethin'.
Ursula: That was not worth a buck ninety-nine.
Kevin: Ain't that a thing.
Ursula: Yeah, yah, dere's a ting.
Kevin: Dere's a ting, yah.
Ursula: Um, I would go, I would spend your money on Top Ramen, honestly, rather than that, and that --
Kevin: Yeah!
Ursula: -- that's quite a statement from me --
Kevin: And you can --
Ursula: -- for a buck ninety-nine, you can get what, twenty ramen? Forty?
Kevin: No, no, prices have gone up.
Ursula: Eh.
Kevin: So, sorry. But at least with Top Ramen, you can occasionally get creative. With, um...
Ursula: With that, about the only thing creative I can think of is different ways to dispose of it creatively. I'm not giving it to the beagle --
Kevin: Nooo, mm-no, no, nonono, no. No.
Ursula: I love him --
Kevin: Yeah. 
Ursula: He would be a sad dog.
Kevin: I was thinking though, you know, it would be -- the cheap -- you can get the cheap, you know, pre-cooked chicken and throw that in with your Top Ramen. Get a little meat with it. You can -- I once made a bouillabaisse out of shrimp ramen, some fish that my roommate had caught illicitly in a pond nearby, and a pot.
Ursula: How Kevin got mercury poisoning, you heard it here first.
Kevin: That's a fair, fair potential -- I mean, it was a nearby pond, I don't think the cows that were drinking out of it were getting mercury poisoning.
Ursula: Oh, so you got E. coli!?
Kevin: ...nooo? ... I would think if I got E. coli, I would have noticed by now.
Ursula: *dourly* It's sleeper E. coli.
Kevin: Then it's been sleeping for -- what year is this?
Ursula: Two thousand ten.
Kevin: So it's been sleeping for like twenty years by now. I really doubt I have --
Ursula: It's waiting until you run for President, and then -- it's the Manchurian E. coli, it's gonna wake up in the middle of your acceptance speech, lunge out of your stomach, you're going to barf on the Secretary of State and then die, it'll be epic. Oliver Stone will do a movie about it.
Kevin: Does that mean I get to be President?
Ursula: No.
*both laugh*
Kevin: I thought -- maybe, for a moment, there was some hope, but -- hm.
Ursula: *tries to stop laughing* I'm sorry, dear. *giggles*
Kevin: You know, the chicken --
Ursula: I gotta say, despite its appearance and my initial lukewarmness on the chicken -- I will be fair, it may only be, like, good in comparison to the crap we just nuked, this may actually be, like, mediocre and it's just so wonderful in comparison to that Archer Farms sesame teriyaki crap that we are devouring it, but --
Kevin: -- no...
Ursula: -- despite its really quite unappealing look, I gotta say, the chicken gorgonzola? I kept eating it.
Kevin: Yeah, I noticed.
Ursula: Yes. It, uh...
Kevin: Let's just see. 
Ursula: I'm not saying we'd want to buy it again, but it's not as unpleasant as I thought.
Kevin: Again, no high fructose corn syrup -- oh wait, Trader Joe's. They --
Ursula: They're generally pretty good about that. There's also no gluten, I think.
Kevin: Uh, is it gluten-free?
Ursula: No gluten.
Kevin: No gluten ingredients used. Well, there you go. Whereas the Archer Farms stuff, the first ingredient is semolina wheat. So there we go.
Ursula: I'm all for semolina wheat in its place, but if you are trying to avoid the gluten because, like a friend of mine, it will cause your intestines to delaminate --
Kevin: *shudders dramatically*
Ursula: -- or something equally unpleasant, the gorgonzola would be the way to go.
Kevin: Yes, absolutely. I -- what are we, what's our rating scale this week?
Ursula: Uh... today it is going to be barf bags, because I've been feeling unpleasant all day.
Kevin: Barf bags. All right, so is this how many barf -- how much you would eat before you -- how many barf bags you could fill with it, what are we...
Ursula: Oh, no, now that's just getting gruesome.
Kevin: Okay.
Ursula: No, I'm going to give this, I'm gonna give it... you know, six outta ten bags. It's not bad. It's -- I wouldn't actively seek it out again, I think, but having given it a little time, once I got over my initial repulsion at the look, the taste was pretty good and it was a damn fine -- for a microwave chicken, it came out very well.
Kevin: It did.
Ursula: Texturally, that was a, quite a good microwave chicken.
Kevin: I will agree with you on that, with the caveat that the garlic is right up in your face.
Ursula: Oh, well, yeah.
Kevin: It's a good thing we both had it, because again, the... you know, killing each other with the garlic... scent and all.
Ursula: Yes. Yes.
Kevin: Archer Farms --
Ursula: Chewy, garlic, everything else, you know, both parties should definitely imbibe.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah.
Ursula: Or one should have no sense of taste. Either-or.
Kevin: So that was the Trader Joe's Chicken Gorgonzola.
Ursula: Archer Farms I am giving a... one out of seven barf bags. That's a bad rating, by the way.
Kevin: Yes, that's -- yes, yes. The Asian Inspired Sesame Teriyaki Lunch Bowl from Archer Farms, that gets a big fat "it sucks".
*beagle howling in background*
Ursula: Yes. You're going to have to --
Kevin: I know, I'm going to have to clean that up, and I'm going to have to go, you know, shush the beagle because apparently throwing the thing across the room has inspired the beagle to bark.
Ursula: The interesting thing is he's not barking at us. I believe it is likely a deer farted in the woods somewhere within a mile radius. He's a very good hunting dog. Unfortunately, neither of us hunt, so the issue has never arisen. It's kind of sad, really.
Kevin: That's true. All right, so --
Ursula: And the Vigo Red Beans and Rice, we are giving -- I will give that an eight out of ten.
Kevin: I'm with you on the eight out of ten.
Ursula: It's cheap, it's filling, it's really easy, particularly if you have a rice cooker -- in fact I recommend it very highly with the rice cooker -- you could feed a family for three bucks if you had some side dishes.
Kevin: Yeah, it's -- or, and you could add some sausage to it, that'd really... "jazz up" the flavor, as I make the air quotes and hate myself now for that.
Ursula: I hate you too.
Kevin: Yes.
Ursula: And I will -- and despite being the intermediate level if you cook it on the stove, I'm gonna say it's idiot level if you do it in a rice cooker, so for all of the idiot cooks out there... get a rice cooker.
Kevin: A rice cooker and a, uh...
Ursula: Microwave.
Kevin: A rice cooker, a microwave, and a George Foreman grill, those are the three necessities right there.
Ursula: I have never actually used the George Foreman grill, although whenever we have brunch the bacon gets made on the George Foreman grill.
Kevin: Yes.
Ursula: Bacon is one place where I feel it does not pay to eat cheap; we go to a local guy who raises pigs and makes his -- I mean, someone else probably makes the bacon from his pigs, but, like...
Kevin: Yeah.
Ursula: So he knows the bacon's name.
Kevin: Yeah.
Ursula: And it is deeply, deeply wonderful.
Kevin: Yes.
Ursula: Except for the jowl bacon where it was good flavor but the texture was really weird and funky, I was not down with the jowl bacon.
Kevin: You're not down with the jowl bacon? All right.
Ursula: No, we're gonna go back to regular bacon. I was willing to try it for science.
Kevin: Okay. All right then.
Ursula: Well, I think that about wraps it up for this issue of -- or, episode of --
Kevin: Episode, uh, thing.
Both: Yes.
Ursula: Thank you for listening, as always, and I'm going to go lay down for a while and hope the chicken gorgonzola doesn't agree with -- disagree with me too violently.
Kevin: So, um, thanks for listening, thanks for --
Ursula: Until next week.
Kevin: -- yes, thanks to our sponsor, Monoceros Media, and thanks to all you wonderful people who listen to us babble for close to half an hour every week. Buh-bye!
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