mmmmmm...in n' out burger. i kind of just wanna book a flight so i can get one for regular price.

That burger did look tasty. I've never been to an In-and-Out Burger, although I've been to CA. Sure wish I had.
I understand that is golfer Phil Mickelson's big guilty pleasure.

Phils BIG Guilty pleasure, eh? You mean besides careless gambling(he changes sponsors frequently to pay for it), cheating on his wife, and being the biggest self centered ass clown on the tour? Then yeah, an In-n-Out burger is "Big" Phils Guilty pleasure.

PS: I want an In-n-Out Burger...now!

Culinary evil-doers, they are.

Mrs. Bucky has strict instructions: when I die, I want to be cremated and my ashes sprinkled on an In-N-Out double double, which should then be tightly vacuum sealed in multiple Food Saver bags and placed in the freezer side of our refrigerator, in perpituity.

She knows that she is supposed to put a note on it that reads, "Here lies Bucky. DO NOT EAT."

PCP,
I hadn't heard all that about Lefty. I know he's one rich dude, so that gambling must have been huge. Sure you don't mean John Daly?
And he cheats on her? Not sure he could do much better.

I'd rather have the corned beef sandwich.

Over on Chowbound, famous opinionated poster Joe H. nailed the power and the glory Inn-N-Out in this classic post, which he now admits was slightly enlustered:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/298616

I got nothing on In-n-Out -- though everything is worth trying once. And I can make a pretty good corned beef sandwich for sixty cents (got some Deer Creek Beef brisket in brine in the fridge and two bucks worth of rye flour from the Amish market in the cupboard as I write). But having been introduced to the glories of the Maid-Rite sandwich in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, I'd find some excuse to get back to the heartland to feast on a few at that pricepoint.

MD Canon - Maid-Rite sandwich? Please elaborate. Also, are going to make your own rye bread? What recipe do you use? I'm an enthusiatic baker wanna be. I have trouble with bread.

Maid-Rite serves what I have come to know as a "loose meat sandwich." It is a scoop full of seasoned ground beef piled on a bun, with just enough seasoning and sauce to hold it there long enough to get the top on. They are a little messy, but wonderfully tasty. FWIW, when I was in elementary school in Pennsylvania, the cafeteria used to serve "hamburger on a bun," which was a loose meat sandwich, rather than a patty. In the days when they actually cooked food in the cafeterias it was apparently easier to do this in great pots on the stove than to bake burgers. Their website is pretty easy to find with a search engine. Though the classic is the only one I had ever heard of, this new incarnation of the franchise offers several different flavors of seasoning. I noticed as I sat down to eat that I was the only one in the dining room that didn't have onion rings.

I remembered how good rye bread was also a couple of weeks ago in Iowa. The first batch I made was as simple as it could be. I made a starter sponge with a cup of water, a little brown sugar, two teaspoons of yeast, a cup of AP flour and a half cup of rye flour. I put it outside, uncovered for two hours, hoping for some wild yeast to join the party. I added rye and bread flour in a 1 to 1 ratio, a couple of teaspoons of salt and let the KitchenAide work it for 15 minutes. I made one free form loaf, sprinkled it with nigella seeds and baked it at 375 until the internal temperature was about 200 degrees ... maybe 40 minutes.

I will do the same again on Friday, with maybe bringing the sponge in after a couple of hours and letting it sit in the fridge overnight before baking it off on Saturday.

Joyce, if you have trouble with bread, look up the New York Times no-knead recipe, or the quick version that was recently in the Times. Even a baking idiot (like me) can get great results with it.

MD Canon (Recent Amana Colonies Tourist) - I finally googled Amana Colonies. Bit of a disappointment since I'd been harboring this picture of a Stonehenge but with refrigerators!

MD Canon and Lissa - thank you! I am going to attempt this rye, but if I have another failure (my self esteem is struggling) I may have to try bread for baking idiots (which I am, I admit). My worst fiasco so far has been the challah attempt #2. Believe it or not, attempt #1 actually was almost there, attempt #2 total disaster! Kneading, texture, feel, humidity, oven temp, so many variables!

PCB, he bet 500K for the ravens to win the superbowl in 2000 at the beggining of the season. That one worked out pretty good, but if he was that careless with that one, imagine how many others there are.

Oh yeah, this is a food blog, sorry!

Fall is the best season for food. Period. The smells, the tastes, the Thanksgiving Glotton Fest. Oh Yeah.

I vaguely remember an episode of Rosanne that centered around "loose meat sandwiches". Had no idea what it was at the time, and have still yet to try one...but the reviews are always universally positive.

I've heard the secret to challah is to use a granny knot...

the Beav wrote: "loose meat sandwiches"... the reviews are always universally positive.

Uh, "universally" over-states it, no offense to any Hawkeyes who might be reading this.

Lissa - you're close, the secret to challah is a granny (or bubbie)!

The Maid-Rites sound good, but also pretty much a sloppy joe?

I hope its not just Manwich sauce.

Joyce W., if you're struggling with bread making I wouldn't recommend a rye bread at this point. They're more difficult than wheat breads, especially if you don't have a mixer with a dough hook.

Stick with some nice easy white breads at first.

He said manwich sauce...

Joyce W., here's a recipe for Rye Bread that makes a sandwich rye bread. As Hal Laurent VOR wrote, they too recommend being familiar with white bread baking. The King Arthur Flour website is a good start for recipes as well as all the supplies needed for baked goods.

Hal, I have a mixer with a dough hook but I just don't have the hang of this bread thing yet! Thanks for the tip though, maybe I'll back up and go to white bread and try to move forward from there. I've so far ruined challah, French and Italian. So much flour wasted! With so much world wide hunger!

BTW, I'm not much better at pie crusts. I may take a baking class at some point in my life just to conquer those areas! But, at least my pound cake is to die for.

A few years ago I gave up and decided to use a bread machine (just like Gandhi did). If you want bread, you get bread. If you want a hobby and thrive on hard work and failure - make your own. I do enjoy making my own bagels though. They're fun. The one thing about a bread machine is that temperature and time of rising are perfect every time. For fancy breads you can use the machine just for the initial stages and then finish off in the oven.

Every time I offer to make bread for someone, without fail they say "marble rye". Really Dillweed? I assume that would involve two kinds of rye mixed together right before baking - the hardest possible feat for a single plain loaf. No marble rye ever.

yup, I said Manwich sauce.

owl (its lowercase now, right), you had me laughing quite loud at that.

Yes, I even typed it out rather than type LOL. I'm still LQTM.

Bread machines are fine if you want bread shaped like a bread machine. :-)

Why would anyone bother to make white bread?

Hal, shaped like a bread machine could be better than some of my past results.

Owl, do you really make bagels from scratch? That's a work load. Mixing, proofing, kettling, baking - it's an all day job! BTW, should you ever become interested in making a blueberry bagel (never got that flavor myself but it pleases many), lemonade crystals will make you blueberries take more blueberry.

Dahlink said: Why would anyone bother to make white bread?

Because I can make better white bread than I can buy. And it doesn't have all kinds of preservatives in it.

PCB Rob -- according to the Maid-Rite website, the loose meat sandwich just has seasoned crumbled ground beef (no sauce of any kind, Manwich or otherwise). Think of it as a sloppy joe, hold the sauce.

Further to Lissa's comment, the recent New York Times item on faster no-knead bread is available at this link. Once at that poage, you must click further links to access various no-knead bread stories and recipes over the last two years.

Well, Dahlink, white bread is easier. And good white bread isn't anything like Wonder Bread

I'll take your word for it, Lissa and Hal VoR. I like my bread whole-grain, thank you very much.

P.S. My local Giant has discontinued my favorite La Brea bread. Does anyone know of another local source?

Dahlink -- La Brea's website has a product locator, but a test of several local ZIP codes kept turning up Giant stores. Weis Markets was also a local source, but their closest stores appear to be in the environs of Perry Hall.

Okay, I have a question for someone. On the "Most Recent Comments" sidebar, I can read the start of the most recent comment, yet when I click on it and I am sent to the correct post category, many times the post isn't there yet. So to recap, the message is in the "Most Recent Comments" sidebar, but not in the post category.
Why the heck does that happen, and am I the only one that it happens too (although I doubt that)?

Susan, here is the technical explanation: the blogware sucks. I encounter many such anomalies. Glad to see others share in my misery. Is there a word for that? Auto-schadenfreude? Sempathy?

On the "Most Recent Comments" sidebar, I can read the start of the most recent comment, yet when I click on it and I am sent to the correct post category, many times the post isn't there yet

If your refresh your browser (F5 key on both browsers I use) at that point, the new posts will usually appear.

Susan, I find that I have to refesh my browser pages constantly to get the new posts even after posting a comment. So the recent post info on one page might be up to date but you have to go to that page and then refresh it too. It sounds stupid but it's true sometimes. And there's other weird stuff too that makes no sense.

Susan WSNAJ -- the same thing happens to me in Internet Explorer. I think it's very possible that IE is giving you a cached version of the page from your most recent visit. If you hit the Refresh button, the "missing" entry(ies) will appear.

Susan, hit your refresh button.

I had noticed that problem with new posts not being there. Didn't think of refreshing the page.

thanks VoR and hmpstd!

I use Opera and I get cached pages too.

...there's other weird stuff too that makes no sense.

Sheeeesh, Owl! That's a whole blog in itself! Sometimes, my whole life makes no sense!

I use Opera and I get cached pages too.

Page caching is done by your browser, not by the blog software.

You can tell your browser not to cache pages, but be careful what you wish for.