This one is so easy a caveman could do it.  I just stumbled into this one while looking for a quick bite for lunch the other day.

Here's what you're gonna' need:

- a jar of Famous Dave's Devil's Spit pickle chips (available at most grocery stores)
- (1) slice of bread (you can do 2 slices also if you like)
- (2) slices of deli ham
- Miracle whip  (now, I know some can't stand miracle whip, so you could sub mayo here also, but the miracle whip is good and I'll explain why).

You're basically making a ham sandwich here, but it gets better.

Put your slice of bread down on a plate.  Coat it with Miracle Whip.  Cover that with some of the Devil's Spit pickle chips.  And lastly, place the two slices of deli ham on top.  Then eat it like a slice of pizza.

Here's why this works so well.  The miracle whip and the hot-sweet pickles mix together like a tartar sauce when you bite into it, and the ham on top makes it like a spicy ham salad sammich, but eaten like pizza, and it's great!

It's the dumbest thing really, and I just totally stumbled into it the other day.  I didn't want a whole sandwich, but I was hungry, and those stupid pickles are absolutely addicting, and they were calling me from the fridge (loudly).  So....I was like, let's try this.  After one bite I was thinking..."Hey, I'd actually pay for this!!".  Try it; it's stupid simple and extra good.

If you like hot and spicy I have a favorite sandwich you might like, even though it sounds kind of disgusting.

It's a peanut butter sanwich with nothing else but jalapeno peppers slices. Fantastic sandwich combo!

(01-19-2025, 05:45 PM)FCD Wrote: This one is so easy a caveman could do it.  I just stumbled into this one while looking for a quick bite for lunch the other day.

Here's what you're gonna' need:

- a jar of Famous Dave's Devil's Spit pickle chips (available at most grocery stores)

I enjoy pickles in salads. Not like a bowl of salad, but diced in chicken, ham, or egg salads. Great sandwich topper, though my bread days are behind me.

I just had some zucchini that was about to turn so I did a quick pickle with some mulling spices and a little sugar. First time I used mulling spices and it was quite good. I think it's like a bread and butter pickle as far as flavor, but it's also got a bit of warming spices like black pepper.

I also used to love an egg salad sandwich, with pickles in the salad, and nice crunchy strips of bacon. The bacon needs to be so fried that it's to be point of being brittle and shattering when you bite it, so that it doesn't squish out the egg. Those shards melt into the whole bite as you chew.

(01-19-2025, 08:31 PM)Nugget Wrote: If you like hot and spicy I have a favorite sandwich you might like, even though it sounds kind of disgusting.

It's a peanut butter sanwich with nothing else but jalapeno peppers slices. Fantastic sandwich combo!

This is not at all disgusting! I wouldn't eat it on bread myself, but peanut butter and jalapeno peppers are a great combo. I've heard of thinly sliced garlic on a peanut butter sandwich too.

Peanut butter has all kinds of great uses in savory dishes and I often have had it paired with chilis. Thai flavors go great with peanut butter. You get some fish sauce, some soy sauce, maybe a little chili oil, maybe some garlic, maybe some ginger, and you have some peanut butter to give the sauce body and more umami. Maybe that simmers a little and gets all those flavors going. Toss with some rice noodles in a hot pan, crack an egg or two, finish with some chopped green onions. Maybe you have some ground roasted peanuts, maybe you have some mung bean sprouts, maybe you toss them on too to garnish, maybe you don't. It will still be good, no maybes about that.

SE Asian cuisine is good for freeform cooking. There's a sort of formula and you just need to understand how they build their flavors, then you can mix and match as long as you keep the balance between them.

I'm sure a serious SE Asian foodie or chef would say I'm just muddling a bunch of flavors and not making any real dishes. I would mostly agree and yet it's delicious almost every time. They don't want you to know this, but you can just make stuff up and enjoy eating it. Some of them get super pissed about it for some reason, but they can't do shit. You get to eat a delicious meal and wash it down with food snob tears.

(01-20-2025, 08:49 AM)Ksihkehe Wrote: I enjoy pickles in salads. Not like a bowl of salad, but diced in chicken, ham, or egg salads. Great sandwich topper, though my bread days are behind me.

I just had some zucchini that was about to turn so I did a quick pickle with some mulling spices and a little sugar. First time I used mulling spices and it was quite good. I think it's like a bread and butter pickle as far as flavor, but it's also got a bit of warming spices like black pepper.

I also used to love an egg salad sandwich, with pickles in the salad, and nice crunchy strips of bacon. The bacon needs to be so fried that it's to be point of being brittle and shattering when you bite it, so that it doesn't squish out the egg. Those shards melt into the whole bite as you chew.


This is not at all disgusting! I wouldn't eat it on bread myself, but peanut butter and jalapeno peppers are a great combo. I've heard of thinly sliced garlic on a peanut butter sandwich too.

Peanut butter has all kinds of great uses in savory dishes and I often have had it paired with chilis. Thai flavors go great with peanut butter. You get some fish sauce, some soy sauce, maybe a little chili oil, maybe some garlic, maybe some ginger, and you have some peanut butter to give the sauce body and more umami. Maybe that simmers a little and gets all those flavors going. Toss with some rice noodles in a hot pan, crack an egg or two, finish with some chopped green onions. Maybe you have some ground roasted peanuts, maybe you have some mung bean sprouts, maybe you toss them on too to garnish, maybe you don't. It will still be good, no maybes about that.

SE Asian cuisine is good for freeform cooking. There's a sort of formula and you just need to understand how they build their flavors, then you can mix and match as long as you keep the balance between them.

I'm sure a serious SE Asian foodie or chef would say I'm just muddling a bunch of flavors and not making any real dishes. I would mostly agree and yet it's delicious almost every time. They don't want you to know this, but you can just make stuff up and enjoy eating it. Some of them get super pissed about it for some reason, but they can't do shit. You get to eat a delicious meal and wash it down with food snob tears.

What's funny about all that snobbery is, SE Asian food is the biggest "whatcha' got?" food of the globe.  China too.  They eat anything and everything.  I used to love walking through the wet markets in places like Hong Kong.  You would see some of the craziest shit imaginable, everything from giant insects to every kind of mammal imaginable including rats, bats and animals I'd never even seen before, much of it still alive.  Every kind of offal from every animal, every kind of fish, eel, serpent, reptile, sponge, shellfish, jellyfish, slime...you name it, and they eat it!  If it walks, slithers, crawls, flies, swims or oozes...they eat it.

One thing which was really cool about those places was the spices you could get.  Spices which are generally really expensive here can be had for pennies there.  You could get a fist full of saffron for about $1 dollar (here that would cost $200-300 bucks), and that's just one example.  Plus they have lots of spices we never even see, or rarely ever see.

(01-20-2025, 09:16 AM)FCD Wrote: One thing which was really cool about those places was the spices you could get.  Spices which are generally really expensive here can be had for pennies there.  You could get a fist full of saffron for about $1 dollar (here that would cost $200-300 bucks), and that's just one example.  Plus they have lots of spices we never even see, or rarely ever see.

I've increasingly started buying my spices from bulk suppliers.

When I lived near places with more ethic markets that supported more regional distributors I could get decent prices any place where most of the written language (and often spoken) wasn't in English.

I grabbed a couple pounds of Turmeric before my last big move. That stuff gets a yuppie mark-up at grocery stores like crazy. They have that crap spilling into the streets in India and they're shaking people down for $4 an ounce or something at Safeway. Even fish sauce and Mexican hot sauces have a crazy mark up in these places. They practically bathe in the stuff where it's produced because it's so cheap, then some US distributor slaps a label on a 12 ounce bottle, adds some corn syrup or some other industrial food by-product slop, and charges you $8.

When I am on the road for work, I like to get in a few hours early to check in and then explore the city I am in.

I will find the public market and stock up...I like to eat fresh foods and support local farmers. (Sorry to be such a bad American Billy G.)

A punk grime singer I like has a song about Health is Wealth with the line:

A pig can't kill what a pig can't catch.

I kind of took that to heart.

My best find this summer was fresh, still in the pod garbanzo beans.

At first, sadly, I was shocked, I had only ever seen them in canned or dry form. I bought a pound for $4 dollars from this Middle East shop. The venue was 10 miles away, and the beans did not make it there. I went back 2 days later to get more, and they were gone. I have been able to stop back a few times, but they have not had them again.