Helloooo and welcome to another fantastic blog post containing wholesome content.
I am fresh off a wonderful Sunday where I accomplished nothing more than watching a lot of football and eating too much food. It’s my favorite day of the week by a landslide.
The best thing I ate yesterday were some homemade chicken strips by my lovely girlfriend, Emma.
She requested my honesty for this review, and like a good boyfriend, I listened to her without question and promised to be honest.
So, I’ll be honest, these weren’t the best chicken strips I’ve had. BUT they were the most meaningful I’ve had. They were homemade in Emma’s cozy home and I was surrounded by friends enjoying my favorite day. That’s hard to beat.
OK, now that we have that sappy stuff aside, let’s get to the judgement.
Emma’s breading was for sure the most intriguing so far. She soaked the chicken tenders in sour cream before breading them — a move I had never heard of before, but it excited me. She then breaded and seasoned them before baking them in the oven.
The result was a chicken tender that almost tasted like a sour cream and onion chip. It was truly a unique chicken strip, which was enjoyable.
I will say, these would have been pretty highly rated had they been fried. The breading didn’t have as much crispiness as it would have from a fryer. That’s not a knock, it’s just science. No one just has industrial fryers in their house. And I know smaller deep fryers exist that people can buy for their homes and air fryers are taking off and whatever, but we’re not all rich here. Nonetheless, they were still delicious and I could’ve eaten about five more.
The fries were your standard sweet potato fries. Good flavor, a nice sweet and salty balance. Like the strips, a fryer would’ve helped with the texture, but the flavor was there.
Like a good midwesterner, Emma always keeps some Hidden Valley ranch on deck. It’s the standard of ranch and is always a good choice. It’s no homemade, elevated stuff, but it gets the job done six times out of six.
Overall, I’ll give Emma’s homemade strips a 7. Good flavor all around, just needed some textural help, which the available tools couldn’t provide. I would say for a baked chicken strip, these will be tough to top.
Also, for the record, 7 is my favorite number. *finger guns.*
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I have a treat for you fine souls who are still reading.
For Thanksgiving, I split time between my family and Emma’s family. When we were with Emma’s family, before we left town, we at at Jake’s Pizza in Roseau. This had been highly spoken about by Emma, her family and a friend of mine, Brad.
The first time I went to Roseau, I reviewed Earl’s Drive-In. About 30 seconds after I posted that review to Twitter, Brad messaged me and said I needed to try Jake’s the next time I was up there. I respect that level of urgency.
Well, I tried Jake’s. And Jake’s was delicious. I had a slice of sausage pizza and a Great Canadian sandwich. Both items were great. It was good football pizza, which is my favorite type — the type that you show up to gameday with and are the hero of the party.
They have a signature “Jake’s Sauce” that was incredible. It tasted like a sort of seasoned mayo, or something along those lines. It was very midwestern in the sense that I would eat that sauce with just about anything.
I will absolutely be returning to Jake’s next time I’m in town.
(Yes, I forgot to take the pictures before I started eating)
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