archive.tylerdave.com All the stuff from when Dave was actually called Tylerdave.

On Monday, TB bought a deep fryer. My life will never be the same.

After purchasing the fryer itself, we went to the grocery store and picked up a gallon of oil and a bunch of items to fry. That night we made mozzarella sticks, french fries, onion rings and chicken nuggets. Everything was so damned good.

On Tuesday I made fries from potatoes (rather than from a bag) and I deep fried a burrito (which was of course very good).

Wednesday night, Megan, TB, and I went to ShopRite and bought out all of their stock of mozzarella sticks because they were on sale for $1.79. I think we took home seven boxes. Since TB and I checked out separately, we each got one of those printed coupons for $1.50 off our next purchase of mozzarella sticks.

On Thursday night, we went back to the store to see if they had more of the mozzarella sticks. They did, but the sale sign was gone. Megan ran to get a store ad while I loaded up the cart with all eleven boxes that were on the shelf. Sure enough, the sale price was listed in the ad so we went to check out.

Upon checking out, they scanned at full price ($3.59) so the cashier had to call the manager for a price check. After a little confusion, we got our sticks at the sale price, and TB got one free for noticing the pricing error. On top of all that, we both got another printed coupon for $1.50 off our next purchase of mozzarella sticks.

We were really happy with ourselves that evening, so we took pictures.

Tonight we made chicken wings and of course, more mozzarella sticks. The wings came out completely awesome, so they’re going to be a deep fryer mainstay.

We decided that we need to start documenting all of the things we try to fry, as well as keep a queue for future ideas. Next on tap: deep fried candy bars, oreos, cookie dough, and funnel cake.

About three monts ago Megan and I purchased a few two-liter bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper. Behind the labels were coupons worth $0.55 off the purchase of a two-liter bottle of any Dr. Pepper product. A week later we returned to the grocery store to purchase more bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper, this time using our coupons. We picked up four more bottles, each with a $0.55 coupon behind the label. While we were checking out, we found out that Giant Eagle doubles manufacturers’ coupons up to $1.00. Because the bottles were on sale for 2/$2.00, they ended up being free with the coupons. We’ve repeated the process every time Dr. Pepper has been on sale for $1.00 or less since.

Recently, the coupons have only been appearing on the caffiene-free variety, which makes me think that the supply of bottles with coupons is running out. I’m half tempted to go there a few times this week, taking all of the remaining bottles off their hands.

I think we’ve gotten around 34 bottles for a total of $8.00 so far.

What do you get when you forget about the bags of potatoes, onions, and garlic that you bought a month ago and promptly put on the bottom shelf of the pantry?

The definition of funk.

A few years ago, Megan’s mom introduced me to the best chocolate bar on Earth, the Cadbury Flake. Easter hasn’t been the same for me since.

When we were in high school, Megan used to make popcorn in her microwave by putting regular popping corn in a brown paper bag. I made fun of her for this, calling her method “WT popcorn” or something like that.

Now I find that one of my culinary heroes, Alton Brown, suggests the very same method!

Check out the Plain Brown Popper.

Today was a long day. A few computers at work were acting strange and the developers couldn’t figure out why. They asked me to take a look. It turns out they were infected with W95/Spaces and W32/Opaserv.worm.m. After dealing with that I went to my dad’s work where I’m upgrading all of the computers. I could only take so much of the 400MHz K6-2s so I finally headed home around ten.

When I finally got back home, I walked in the door and smelled something foreign. It was a good smell but it just didn’t seem right. Then Megan told me: She made chocolate cupcakes, from scratch! And they were great!

Maybe there is hope for her cooking after all.

Thanks to all of the commercials lately, I’m convinced that there’s something wrong with the way I cook and drain pasta. All this time I had been cooking pasta in a pot and then sometimes draining it in a separate colander.

Now for the incredibly low price of $14.99 to $19.99 I can have one of the three new pot and draining lid combinations: PastaPro, Pasta Pot Express, or The Better Pasta Pot.

The only question is, how do I decide?

I learned something new new tonight while doing the prep work for a fruit cake recipe (don’t laugh).

I’m sure you knew that soaking meat in order to flavor or tenderize it is called marinating. Did you know that soaking non-meat is more correctly called macerating? Sounds dirty doesn’t it?

I’m leaving home now, and won’t have an internet connection until Saturday or Sunday.

Whether you’ll be enjoying turkey or Tofurky today, happy Thanksgiving.

Why would anyone put cauliflower in with their pickles?