In Part #1 we looked at Mexican,Italian and Greek foods. Today,in part #2, I thought I’d discuss the Chinese fast food market. I looked at various different restaurants and fast food joints and couldn’t separate one from the other as far as unique foods and cultures were concerned. So I tried my best and here’s what you can get at a usual fast food Chinese place.While doing some research on the subject, I realized that Chinese food is the most flexible and the most unique when it came to cooking food. Asians typically eat food in portions so each meal is diced,sliced or cut up into smaller sized portions as opposed to it being large and greasy like American food. Their flexibility comes in their variety of foods as most of the other cultures in the last article focused on one particular food or dish, where as Chinese food can come from many different sources. These sources each have their own different names and identities as well with such names as Szechuan or Cantonese being the favorites in North America.These names come from different regional areas of China and each offer something unique to Asian cuisine. Here’s a full listing of the regional cooking styles of China.

* Anhui
* Cantonese
* Fujian
* Hunan
* Jiangsu
* Shandong
* Sichuan
* Zhejiang

Asians seem to favor many different meat products like pork, chicken or beef mixed in with a variety of different spicy or sweet sauces as well as different varieties of rice, steamed vegetables or noodle dishes. Szechuan typically features spicier food where as Cantonese is more traditional and incorporates more seafood into their menu with different kinds of fish being offered to eat. Also, due to its many varieties; Chinese food incorporates itself very well with buffets which Americans love to eat at.

There are simply way too many dishes to discuss in one article so I will begin by focusing mainly on a few dishes that are more popular with Asian-American fast food restaurants:

1. Kung Pao Chicken: A spicy Szechuan dish made with diced chicken, peanuts and chili peppers. It is named after a Kung Pao or court official.

2. Wonton Soup: is a full meal in itself consisting of thin egg noodles and a few wontons in a pork soup broth. (more…)

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It seems like the more fast food places that you go to nowadays, the more restricted you are on what you can eat. Long gone are the days of the diner or to the place that you could go to where everybody could order something unique that they wanted to eat.

These days it’s all about cultured foods that cater to one society’s unique appetite and unfortunately causes a lot of arguments over where to eat at dinner time. Let’s break it down by looking at each culture and what the fast food joints like to capitalize with for their meals by starting with Greek, Italian and Mexican Food.

Greek Food:

-Souvlakis are the hamburgers of Greece. They are wrapped in pita bread and come with lettuce, tomato, onions, and sadziki,a cucumber-yogurt and garlic type of sauce.

-Greek Salads are a tomato and cucumber salad seasoned with onion, olive oil, vinegar, fete cheese and oregano. Traditionally, no lettuce in a Greek Salad!

-Lamb, I’ve noticed they’re a big fan of lamb and put olive oil in whatever they eat so if you don’t like olive oil for any reason,be warned.

Italian food:

-Pasta ,no meal doesn’t involve some form of noodles in a mixture of tomato sauce. (more…)

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More and more people are getting angry at the way fast food chains promote bad eating habits.That’s why a bunch of alternative fast food chains have opened up shop recently to try and take a bite out of McDonald’s and the like. One of the ones that caught my eye recently is a new chain called ‘Cereality’, which is a fast food chain based on cereals. They offer cereals with both cold and warm milk and offer over 12 brand name cereals to choose from. You are allowed to mix two cereals at a time as well as one topping of your choice.Cereality offers every type of topping to choose from including simple things like dried blueberries or more outrageous stuff like pop rocks. They also offer different types of milk including soy or lactose-free milk if you want an alternative to skim, 2% or whole milk. They even offer a new twist on the colour of milk with the use of Cereality’s own flavour crystals that allow someone to change the colour of their milk to different colours such as red or blue.

In the mood for something other than cereal?Cereality provides s’mores and oatmeal brownies as well as their very own oatmeal twist on parfaits. Do you want something to drink? Cereality offers their own version of a smoothie with the ever so cute name of a ‘Slurreality’. Slurrealities offer a concoction of strawberries, bananas, yogurt, OJ and bran cereal. Cereality also offers their own version of a bowl to make sure that your cereal stays where it’s supposed to with their own milk tight concept of a plastic container.

At select locations, they also offer an invent-a-blend kiosk that let’s you practice mixing up a new version of cereal as well as pay for your meal and retain your customer purchase on their database for future reference. A basic meal consisting of two scoops of cereal,flavour and milk will cost you about 4$. Currently there are only two cereality locations in the United States with a third location set to open soon in Chicago. If successful, Cereality will be coming to a mall, train or subway station near you.

Click here for a CBS News report on Cereality:

http://cereality.com/TheNews.wmv

(go to www.cereality.com for more information)

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Well it’s officially Summer so there’s no better time than to talk about the old BBQ and foods that you can use on it to entertain your stomach. A couple of foods come to mind but the easiest and fastest thing that I can come up with at this moment are hamburgers and hot dogs. I prefer to use the term burgers and dogs though , so for the rest of this article I will be mentioning those terms as such. A couple of things to note when having a BBQ: First off, make sure you invite a good amount of people to the BBQ. The last thing that you want is to have too many or too few people.

The reason for this is with too many people, food gets eaten way too fast and you might not have enough food to give and the other reason being that you don’t want to look like a loser now do you. Another recommendation is to tell the people coming to bring something to add to the food you already have. It doesn’t have to be expensive but the more stuff and the more variety of that stuff , the better.

This means that you can ask people to bring dips, chips, beer etc. to add to the main foods so that people can drink and snack on stuff and you don’t have to shell out lots of money buying this stuff and can just concentrate on making the burgers and dogs.Another thing that might help is a BBQ. Unless you plan on starting a wildfire on burning your house down accidentally I’d recommend you find a BBQ with either charcoal or propane to use to heat the thing up with. If you plan on having girls at your BBQ than you might not realize this but most hot girls don’t look like supermodels from eating burgers all day. Either try to supply some alternative for them like a nice salad with different dressings on the side for them to choose from, fruits and vegetables or a veggie burger or dog as an alternative for the BBQ.

My final recommendations are to pick a day when it’s not raining as that would certainly suck as well as buy some bug repellents like those citronella poles you heat up to get rid of unwanted bugs like mosquitoes as those things can certainly ruin a fun BBQ. Also somewhere to sit like a pic-nic table would be nice as opposed to the ground. Alright let’s get to the food itself finally.

Make sure to heat the BBQ for a bit before using it,either by turning the valve from the propane tank a bit then hitting the ignite switch or by throwing in a match as an alternative for charcoal and propane BBQS. If you left the burgers or dogs in the freezer,make sure to let them defrost for a bit or leave them in the refrigerator for a bit before you cook them.Place burgers and dogs on grill. (more…)

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I can’t say anything bad about tacos. Well, actually, the part about the bathroom and the need for antacid is quite awful but I swear that’s the only downside to this stuff. For anybody who wants to learn how to actually cook something on the stove; Tacos are a good start. Once the meat is actually cooked though, it’s a neat food that can include whatever you want to add into it. Also, if you’re not a big fan of taco shells and complain that they break easily, there’s always the option of buying tortilla wraps instead.

Here’s what you need:
1. package of grounded beef
2.wooden spoon
3.frying pan
4.Taco sauce #1
5.Stove
6.Tomatoes
7.Lettuce
8.Mozzarella cheese
9.Cheddar Cheese
10.Taco sauce #2
11.Sour Cream
12.Cheese grinder.
13.Taco shells
14.Oven
15.Cooking pan
16.Knife
17.Tums (depending on your stomach’s ability to cope with tacos)
You can probably add other stuff to your taco but that’s enough ideas for now.

It’s time to cook. Heat up your stove to anything over medium heat and throw the meat into the frying pan. Start to stir the meat around and use your spoon to cut it up into smaller pieces that will actually fit inside your taco. Also,make sure to dispose of the packaging around the meat as the last thing I want to see is some boobnewb fan telling me he got food poisoning from E Coli. Once the meat is almost cooked lower the heat to medium and dispose of any of the fat from the meat into the sink or some temporary bowl.The reason for this is to avoid having a watery sauce . We want to have a nice think sauce instead.

Once that’s done add taco sauce #1 mixed with a cup of water into the frying pan. The reason that I mention taco sauce #1 is because this is the sauce that makes the taco meat as opposed to taco sauce #2 which you can use on top of your meat after it’s finished. Continue to cook the meat on medium heat until all of the water has drained and you’re left with a nice thick meat sauce that you can now add to your taco shells. Now we need to cook the taco shells. Preheat the oven and throw some shells on to a pan and have them heat for a few minutes.

Attention*** Watch the shells very closely as they burn easily. Trust me on this. I once had black shells. They tasted like shit. Your taco shells and meat are now complete. It’s time for the additives. Take a knife and chop up some tomatoes and lettuce. I like to cut mine very thin and into a million pieces but the choice is up to you. You then need to shred some cheese into string like pieces. If you want to avoid this, then you can simply buy already shredded cheese at your local grocery store if you’re lazy like me.

All you need to do now is to add the tomatoes,lettuce,meat,cheese with a spoon into your taco shells very carefully as to avoid breaking the shaky crust. What I like to do is to add sour cream on the outer edges of the shell to make sure that all of the stuff you just added doesn’t fall out and hit your nice new pair of Nikes or new designer shirt. You can finish it off by adding taco sauce #2 if you wish to finish things off.

Old El Paso makes a nice starter kit for the taco enthusiast that comes with shells and sauce together to help save time. Once finished, enjoy your taco and make sure to turn off the stove and oven as we don’t want a fire incident. Also,make sure to not drink soft drinks with your tacos as that can help increase the meeting between you and your bathroom. Have fun and enjoy those tacos!

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