Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Cornmeal and "Ham" Griddlecakes with a Side of "Better than Bacon"


I wrote a big, long, laugh-your-ass off brilliant, amazing write-up on the cornmeal and "ham" griddlecakes and "Better than Bacon" I made on Sunday, but then the damn computer here crashed on my last sentence, and I lost it all. Why, God, why?!?!

So use your imagination today, and picture this as the funniest, wittiest, most brilliant thing you've ever read, even though it probably will not be.

And in case your imagination sucks, continue reading, and I will instead attempt to hypnotize you into thinking it.


When I snap my fingers, you will think that
this is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!
This is the most brilliant thing you've ever read!


Uh, yeah.

So back to the food. I hadn't cooked breakfast for me or the feller in a while, so when I stumbled across both these recipes and realized I had all the ingredients at home already (except for the "ham"), I figured why the hell not.

At first I was suspicious of the Better than Bacon. I mean, how can tofu taste like bacon really? But I sliced it as thin as I could--I tried the cheese-slicer idea first which would've been brilliant if it had taken into account that most tofu is super-pock-marked and lumpy and bumpy so it's damn near impossible to get one continuous thin slice off the side without it falling apart, so eventually I gave up and just used a knife--and then dumped it into the fridge to marinate for a couple of days. When I removed it, it didn't look much different than when I put it in--it still looked pretty much as pasty-ass as a white-boy with a farmer's tan. But then I fried the shit out of it (and with fat-free oil-spray!!) and holy mother of god! We were both amazed at how much it tasted like bacon (god bless you, hickory smoke liquid!).

Seriously, if you can figure out a way to cut that tofu up into paper-thin slices, it actually fries up ridiculously crisp and crunchy. The few pieces that we thinned down enough were startlingly comparable with bacon in both their consistency and crunchiness. (And with only a smidgen of the calories!) Even the thicker slices (while not crunchifying quite so well) were really damn yummy. I was very-much impressed, especially given the simplicity of ingredients in the recipe.

"Better than Bacon": RECIPE

As for the cornmeal and "ham" griddlecakes, I decided from the get-go that I wasn't gonna use silken tofu for the recipe because I had no clue what I'd end up using the excess for, so I figured there was a pretty good chance it'd end up going to waste. So instead I substituted in Ener-G Egg Replacer for one egg. I also had my doubts about these pancakes as well, given that the batter was super-fricking thin, even after I let it sit for 10 minutes. But lo and behold, this was probably the easiest batter I've cooked with, when it came to flipping and cooking evenly and all that. And they were pretty damn hearty--the end result tasted like what you'd get if cornbread and a fake-pig were walking jollily down the road together when *slam* they got run over by a big ol' semi and were squashed into flattened mock-roadkill pancakes. Cornbready goodness in the shape of pancakes with little itty bitty fake hammy-goodness thrown in--that be my point. Again: simple and tasty.

Cornmeal and "Ham" Griddlecakes: RECIPE

All in all, both recipes are pretty damn easy, and I definitely recommend them both, particularly the "Better than Bacon" seeing as we both couldn't stop oohing and aahing over it all breakfast. Ever so pretty!


You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.
You will eat it, and you will like it.

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