Slyman's

While in Cleveland, our President made his best, most commendable and irreproachable decision of his two terms of office today.

He decided to have a corned beef sandwich at Slyman's.

We have been so remiss in not posting about one of the most glorious food places in Cleveland that we rarely get to go to. It's only open on weekdays until lunch, and since the lines are notoriously long, Cleveland's best deli mocks us with their famous corned beef sandwiches.

So last week when Foodgoat and I got off work early for the 4th of July, there was just one place we wanted to go.















The lines were only a little long (just out the door) but it's a fair price to pay because their corned beef sandwiches! are! so! good!
The perfect combination of just the right amount of fattiness (which is to say, not too much) to indescribably yummy beef ...

Order one "all the way" and you also get swiss cheese, mustard, and horseradish (plus bonus points from the staff for knowing the lingo).

After experiencing the goodness again, Foodgoat has decided that trekking out across the city to Slyman's for lunch is well, well worth it.

Two Appliances for Slow Cooking Meat

A few months ago, everyone at work was suddenly mad for the Farberware Open Hearth Smokeless Broiler, an electric rotating meat rotisserie thing-y that was apparently the wedding gift of choice during the 1960's. The succulence of meats (so juicy! so tender!) slow cooked over a bottom heating element for four hours, has been so celebrated, I find myself eying them on eBay.

What stops me? In a word, storage: our teensy 1925 kitchen barely has the counterspace for the coffee grinder, much less a large single-use appliance.

Especially when the slow cooker, the multi-tasking Crock Pot, is working out so well. Just last week Foodgoat discovered yet another tasty thing it can do: it can make corned beef.

The nearby deli makes a decent corned beef sandwich - for $8. We can pick up a corned beef package from the grocery store for less than that, plop it (fat meticulously trimmed off, as per Foodgoat standard policy) into the slow cooker at night with water and the packet of herbs that it comes with, and in the morning ...

A muy delicioso pile of corned beef, tender and juicy, ready for several day's worth of personalized and yummy (and inexpensive) sandwiches for lunch.

But I still want to try a Farberware Open Hearth Smokeless Broiler, storage and possible fire hazard be damned. Because then I could put on a very large chunk of pork, or possibly a very tiny whole pig. Because roasting for hours and turning on a spit is the how lechon (tasty, tasty lechon) is made.

And now that I think about it, there is always room for lechon.

It's True: It's Boar, Not Boring!

When we are forced by circumstance to pick up bacon at the local grocery store instead of the West Side Market, I end up disgruntled. The quality of the packaged bacon leaves something to be desired, being less flavorful and usually very fatty. But to add insult to injury, the price is often double that of bacon at the West Side Market.

Then, while shopping at Heinen's a few weeks ago, we spotted a bacon that ungruntled us: D'Artangnan's Wild Boar Bacon. Sure, the price is a stiff $8 a pound, but eating wild boar... feral swine ... maybe even Hogzilla! Priceless.

It didn't disappoint, either. It tasted different from the run of the mill farm-bred bacon: meatier and more interesting and de-licious on a burger.

On a side note: this year's Fourth of July lesson is to never leave a cardboard box of paper bags underneath the barbeque grill. Especially when grilling.

Taking Me Out to the Ball Game

Foodgoat and I went to an Indians game last week for the first time in a few seasons, and found lots of new things - like the spiffy Heritage Park and the Batter's Eye Bar out by center field.

And may I say, thank the gods for the bar, not only because they served me a rather tasty raspberry-lemon-lime frozen margarita before the game, but also because the four annoying guys sitting behind us decided by the bottom of the second inning to hang out there, thereby sparing me and everyone else in section 101 from having to listen to their idiotic conversations about stupid things that happened ten years ago when they were in junior high.

This Is Foodgoat's Idea of Baking

Instant pudding + pre-made pie crust + a can of Reddi-whip.