Brandon Sevestre

Nice alternative to eggs, and a great way to start the morning.

Long ago I perfected the art of omelet. Well at least according to how I like them.  Most notably on a recent Christmas morning, I made everyone a “southwestern omelet wrap” complete with hot sauce. Pretty damn good on a bagel too. But, all those recipes can be rolled into another post. For now, I want to tell you about my alternative to that. In the name of being healthier but just as flavorful, I finally broke down and tried “Egg Beaters” I’ll let them explain why:

For a nutritious alternative to shell eggs, try Egg Beaters® Original. Made from real eggs, Egg Beaters Original are a low-calorie source of protein with no fat or cholesterol.

So you get to enjoy eggs guilt free. I’m down. Well the only problem is that pouring an egg out of a cartoon doesn’t really make for an omelet consistency. It ends up being a bit fragile and won’t keep it’s act well enough to be flipped or folded. Not with ease anyway, as I was able to cook it slow enough once to where I could flip it. The more stuff in the omelet, the trickier this becomes. Since I always want to basically have a little eggs with my veggies and not the other way around, something had to give. So I became satisfied with just making scrambled eggs. Who needs the extra calories from a tortilla or bagel anyway? Make enough eggs and you won’t miss that.

Get these items:

• Egg Beaters® Original
• A ton of your favorite omelet worthy vegetables
• cheese if you prefer
• hot sauce or your favorite topping for eggs

This couldn’t be much easier. Cut up a bunch of vegetables, pour them into a Pam lubed pan, and filler it up with Egg Beaters. Cover, and cook really low and slow for the fluffiest mouth watering eggs. It takes longer but you will be thankful. Stir everything up after a few minutes and maybe once more before they become less like liquid. Once nothing is runny, pour it into a bowl and dig in or top with grated cheese, Parmesan cheese, hot sauce, or whatever you want. I like to put a little Redneck Pepper or other seasoning on before I cook them for a little something extra. Enjoy!

Slice up your vegetables. You could add a protein here if you wanted.

Simply dump the veggies into your pan after a light spray of Pam.

Pour in the Egg Beaters, just enough to barely cover them works well.

Sprinkle on some seasoning, in this case Redneck Pepper.

All set to cook, keep the heat on low. Takes longer but is worth the wait.

Be sure to mix a few times, every few minutes. Burnt food sucks.

That's it! Ready to inhale.

Go wild and top with whatever you'd like. This picture was taken right before I dumped on a bunch of Gator Sauce.

This thin crust crab pizza idea was inspired from a seafood spread

Every holiday season, my mom would make a cream cheese cracker spread with cocktail sauce and crab. Very simple. Very delicious. Crab tastes great anyway, the cheese and cocktail sauce complimented each other well, and the butter crackers were the edible plate to bring it all home. Damn good.

Years later I became obsessed with anything wrapped up in a tortilla. Incidentally another party favorite, tortilla pinwheels, started this habit of mine. Throughout college I would combine the two and, rather than slice into pinwheels, just make a meal out of it as a wrap. Back then, sticking it the microwave was plenty good… even though it always came out way too hot and soggy. Finally I found the wonder of the convection oven and decided to try this dish as a flat out pizza style concoction. It was then that I realized two types of cheese, crab meat, and cocktail sauce was just the beginning. The introduction of vegetables to this plate brought it to a more dynamic level. My voracious appetite for the crab pizza was here to stay. Here’s how I do it…

Roll Call:

• Spinach tortillas, or whichever kind you like
• Basic cocktail sauce, horseradish and tomato ketchup
• Cream cheese, chive and onion works well, but garden veggie would be good too
• Crab (fake will do but real is amazing)
• Vegetables, in this case: Artichoke, Portobello mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, green peppers
• Mozzarella cheese
• Oregano

Chop up your veggies into small pieces and set aside. In a small bowl, mix up a healthy scoop of prepared horseradish. When you think you have enough, add a little more. Slop on some ketchup, not too much (slightly less than you put in horseradish), and mix it up with a butter knife. Take a tortilla and spread on a decent layer of cream cheese, keep it even and to the edges. Hand shred some crab and place evenly all over, leaving a little space between pieces for the remaining toppings. Take the cocktail sauce and splatter all over the tortilla with the butter knife. If you are not big on theatrics I supposed you could spread it, but you risk upsetting your previously established crab field. Sprinkle on all the vegetables, keep them all over but not too thick. This is a thin pizza so you don’t want to weigh it down or it’ll be a mess to eat, unless of course you’re into that sort of thing. Cover with a thin layer of mozzarella cheese and sprinkle on some oregano. Bake it up on 325 degrees for about 8 minutes, then switch to broil for about another 8 minutes to brown the cheese on top and seal the deal. Keep a close eye on this towards the end or it’ll turn into a black sheet of ashes. Grab the pizza cutters and toss it on a plate. I’ve only ever made this for myself or a guest but I’m sure it would be a hit at a party. You would just need to make at least a couple of them to satisfy the mob.

As with any of my recipes, let me know if you try it out, and be sure to send me pictures! Personally, I love this one on a rainy day as it always makes me smile.

Slice up the vegetables first so they are ready when you need them.

All you need for a basic cocktail sauce. Keep it hot with tons of horseradish.

Stir it up well. This stuff is great!

Cocktail sauce, all mixed up.

The 1/3 less fat kind of cream cheese will work just fine.

Lay down a bed of crab meat.

I literally fling the cocktail sauce on here. Trying to spread it messes up the crab meat.

Settle all the veggies into place. They make this meal even more exciting.

Light layer of cheese and oregano.

A decent convection oven fits one pizza perfectly and cooks pretty evenly. Don't cheap out and get a "toaster oven" because they suck.

Crab Pizza, time to slice it up!

Oh yes! You want one! Super easy for a night in with a movie.

Grape Ape. A light and tasty vodka drink.

I wanted to invent a drink with vodka because it is only 70 calories a shot and is just subtle enough to be like the blank sheet of paper… of liquor. With vodka as the base we need a filler mixer to give the drink volume and dilute the spirits a little bit. This is the main difference between this and a regular vodka and cranberry juice drink. Flavored carbonated water is zero calories and has just enough of a taste to gently contribute to the drink as a whole. Cranberry juice tastes great but has a lot of sugar. By using diet cran-grape you can maintain the original soul while adding a sweeter fruit juice. Keep it all chill with some ice and you’ve got a delicious grape soda and vodka alternative with plenty of taste without any heaviness.

Gather these items:

• vodka
• flavored soda water
• diet cran-grape juice
• ice
• a cool cup/mug

Fill up your choice cup with ice, not too much but a good amount. You’ll want to keep this cold as you sip. Pour in your desired amount of vodka. I like to take it easy and use one shot worth even though I’m using a full sized cup. Okay, maybe a little more. Now fill up on the soda water, leaving room for about a 1/4 of your cup. Top it off with the cran-grape which gives it a nice color and stir it up well. If you think you are James Bond you can shake it.

This drink is very tasty without being overwhelming. It only has 75 calories, maybe less depending on how much cran-grape you use. Because this drink has a lighter feel to it, you can enjoy it with a meal without feeling overly stuffed. It’s even great for the beach or pool!

Dump in about 3/4 of your cup's worth of ice to keep things cool

Use a fun cup

You can waste money on "better" vodka if you want. I'll stick with this for now.

I like this white grape type, strawberry is good too. Try 'em all if you want.

Diet cranberry grape juice. Even though this is a "diet" drink, it still tastes great.

All set. If you aren't wanting an alcoholic drink, just drop the vodka and you'll still enjoy it.

This is a tortellzone. It will enter your dreams. Fully loaded calzone stuffed with three cheese tortellini, etc.

I’ve seen almost everything put on top of a pizza. Including a fast food burger, fries, and chicken nuggets, etc. You’ll find some wonderful examples at thisiswhyyourefat.com. While a great novelty item, most of those shock value creations are a bit silly. Moderation is the key, right? Maybe not. For this idea though, I wanted something that was well balanced and a little over the top without being disgustingly limit-pushing.

There was a fantastic pizza shop near UCF that made wonderful calzones. Throughout my schooling there, I’d occasionally treat myself to a supreme calzone, sausage, pepperoni, and the usual vegetables. The addition of ricotta cheese to what is essentially a folded over pizza was just wonderful. Top with some marinara sauce and you’re all set. Too much ricotta can ruin a calzone for some people but it is that special something that brings this dish to a slightly different side of awesome than regular pizza. Consider the marinara sauce on top or on the side and you have even more moisture going on. Which reminded me of …pasta. Why not combine the two? And, while we’re at it… let’s make it three cheese stuffed tortellini? Yes! Not wanting to loose the original calzone flavor I’ll include everything that was in my old favorite plus some new ingredients to bring the whole party together. Alright, here’s how it went down, the first ever tortellzone (calzinni is too “cute” for this behemoth)…

Buy all of this stuff from a store. Or borrow it from some chump, what do I care?

• pizza dough (most regular bread dough will work fine)
• your favorite tortellini (I went with three cheese but all tortellini is awesome so you can’t go wrong)
• hot Italian sausage (I’d probably settle for turkey sausage next time to save some calories and fat, but then again it’ll be futile)
• ricotta cheese (go for the low fat version, you won’t be able to tell)
• shredded mozzarella cheese
• alfredo sauce (we actually used sun-dried tomato and 4 cheese alfredo, healthy I know)
• red sauce
• veggies (green peppers, onions, portobello shrooms, artichokes)
• garlic, fresh pressed

Take the dough and roll it out into a circle. Make it is big as you are brave. Spread a layer of alfredo sauce all over the dough and sprinkle the garlic all over. Dedicate one half to pile on the stuffing. Layer the tortellini with sausage, ricotta, mozzarella, alfredo sauce, and veggies. Top with some more sauce and cheese. Fold over the dough to make a large pouch, pressing the dough together around the edges. Sprinkle some cheese on top, or if you’re like my bro JJ add a couple more tortellini to garnish the top of the closed calzone. Bake for about 30 minutes on 350, The ouside should have browned a little and the cheese fully melted. Take it out and let chill. If you do more than one just rotate shelves half way through. Otherwise just spin a single Tortellzone around on the middle shelf. Toss some tomato sauce on top and slice it on up and dig it.

The way the flavors of this dance with each other is indescribable. You really should make this dish, you won’t regret it. I made relatively weak attempts at picking healthier ingredients but this meal is only about taste. Send me pictures if you tackle this beast.

Holy smokes! That's a mountain of win. Tortellini-stuffed calzone aka Tortellzone just before folding over

About to burst, and almost ready to bake

JJ went the extra step and topped with a couple tortellinis

JJ's finished, sliced open tortellzone

My own tortellzone, fully baked

JJ's tortellzone ready to eat

The faultline, I had to slice this into three seperate servings

First serving of my own tortellzone, we talked about how immensely great this meal was the entire rest of the evening

Mexican pizza is delicious and isn't "bad" for you

So the almost fake “holiday” Cinco de Mayo was coming up and rather than “Bah, humbug!” my way out of “celebrating” I decided to slap together a favorite recipe of mine. Oh and Corona. Mmm… Corona. OK. OK. Further back than that I had created this recipe with inspiration from none other than Taco Bell. Before I proceed I must say; Don’t ever eat at Taco Bell. As a kid I remember eating these and thinking it was so amazing. Ignorance is bliss, eh? My mature (snob?) taste buds have since deleted the potential for patronizing such a terrible restaurant. This may wind up being a theme and I hate to say it over and over but, if you want it done right, do it yourself. Healthful, fun, and way more delicious, this recipe deserves to be made at your own kitchen.

Gather up this stuff:

• flour tortillas (be good and use the reduced fat, calories, etc. type)
• can of black beans, drained and roughly smashed to a pulp (much better for you than refried beans and still tasty)
• marinated and baked or grilled chicken (Caribbean jerk works well, add a splash of lemon juice too)
• diced veggies, I used green peppers, onions, tomatoes
• finely chopped cilantro
• shredded Mexican cheeses (the reduced fat kind doesn’t melt well so you might try blending that with some full flavor variety or make sure no one is looking)
• sour cream, guacamole, queso sauce, salsa… for the condiment party

While the chicken is cooking mash up the beans, and cut the vegetables. Then cut the chicken up into smallish pieces and get ready to build these bad boys. Throw down a tortilla and use a spoon to slather your smashed up black beans all over. Top that by placing pieces of chicken all around. This layer is done. Taco Bell did it with refried beans and ground beef if I recall correctly. Bump that noise. Slap on another tortilla and push down on it gently to really marry the chicken and the black beans together. This provides a foundation for what comes next.

Add all the veggies evenly. As with all pizzas, if you put too many toppings on it you won’t be able to pick up the pieces with your hands without a huge mess. Hey, I don’t know, you might like that? I don’t prefer a bare naked pizza so I strive for the happy medium. Who said a fork was evil? We’re humans, we use tools. Alright, so after you load up the veggies, shout for Cheesasaurus Rex. Pour on all the cheesy goodness you can handle. Sprinkle on some cilantro for that herbal touch and slide into the middle of a 350 degree preheated oven. Don’t forget to Pam the cookie sheet or they might stick really bad. Two should fit on a full sized cookie sheet. If you cook more than that you can place an additional sheet on the top shelf of the oven, just rotate them out half way through baking. I usually go around 8 minutes, rotate (spin them around even if you are only using one cookie sheet) and then go another 8 minutes. Maybe more. Just make sure the cheese melts real nice and you should be ready to go. When they come out, use a pizza cutter to chop this monster into 8 little triangles of goodness. Garnish with your favorite Mexican condiments, some tortilla chips, and a cold Mexican beer.

Black beans, mashed up

Marinated and baked chicken, chopped up

Lime for the Corona

Corona is delicious

Tomatoes, chopped

Green peppers and onions, chopped

A layer of mashed up black beans

Cilantro and cheese

A layer of chicken

Add another tortilla and the remaining toppings, tomato layer

Add remaining veggies, a layer of onions and green peppers

Enjoy another Corona

Top with cheese, go ahead, put on another handful, calcium is good for you

Top with cilantro, a nice touch

All baked up, Mexican pizzas

Sliced up Mexican pizza

Open wide!

Crab Quesadillas

So everyone likes quesadillas. Well, they should anyhow. Mexican food is wonderful in general and when the word cheese is in the name you can’t possibly go wrong. Enter: Seafood. Yes shrimp quesadillas would be fantastic as well, but I’ve already done that and shrimp isn’t so rare around this house. I’ve also done the fake crab/lobster combination yet that was mainly to save a buck or two. Then I get the call, my fiance is at the warehouse/grocery store that is Sam’s Club and finds a 1 lb. bucket of real king crab. Yes! At a mere 17 dollars, it was finally time to bring some crustacean into the cheese sandwich.Hey, it may not have been fresh-cooked, but it was real.

As it goes with pizza, burgers, or pasta the quesadilla remains flexible with regards to ingredients outside the core items.  All you really need is cheese and a tortilla, but why stop there? I’ve loaded this bastard to the hilt though you should go ahead and vary it up if you feel empowered.

Crab Quesadillas

• King Crab
• Shredded Mexican cheese
• Shredded mozzarella cheese
• Red bell peppers
• Spinach
• Sweet onions
• Portabella mushrooms
• Flour tortillas
• Guacamole
• Salsa
• Sour cream

1. Saute the vegetables in a large pan on medium heat. Throw in some Italian dressing to keep things moist. Once cooked, turn the heat down to low to keep things hot while you prepare each quesadilla.
2. Spray some Pam on another large pan, after the pan gets hot on medium high heat toss on a tortilla and load up one side with the veggies and throw on some crab. Smother with cheese and fold over the tortilla. When the cheese melts carefully flip over and give that side a go. Flip over a couple times if needed to get both sides crispy and browning.
3. Slice it up into wedges with a pizza cutter. Garnish with guacamole, sour cream, salsa and serve next to some of your favorite tortilla chips.

After making this, I could barely contain myself from eating two full quesadillas. It was still awesome as a leftover, and the remaining ingredients work just as well as a buritto. The beauty of Mexican food!

Crab Quesadillas, also good as a buritto!

20 bucks and some manual labor can make a great table.

So my awesome parents gave my fiance a brand new sewing machine last year for the holidays and there was only one problem; no where to put it. Shacking up in an apartment limits things a bit with space and we already have two makeshift tables as computer desks in our bedroom. Playing musical desks with equipment is never very conducive to productive use and if one thing is stored away all the time chances are it won’t get used as much as originally intended. OK so we need another desk, great.

Having looked online, in big box stores, in thrift stores, and even in a used furniture store I began to think “if you want it done right, do it yourself”. Everything I found was either tacky, the wrong size, expensive, or overkill. I basically needed a workbench that wouldn’t be ugly for inside use and that I wouldn’t care if it took some beating or got a blemish or two. Time to hit up Home Depot! With 20 dollars worth of wood I set out to defy the limits of what was commercially available.

Here’s what it took:

• 1 4′x2′ sheet of 3/4″ MDF
• 2 pine 2′x4′ studs
• 2 1″x4″ whitewood boards
• screws
• wood glue
• trim nails
• 1 afternoon with Pops in the garage

We fired up the router and took the 90 degree edge of the MDF down to a smooth 1/4 circle. Then we added small blocks of the whitewood as support by drilling then into the underside of the table’s surface. Next up, we cut the whitewood to proper length for use as a skirt for which the studs would eventually be attached to. A nice tight fit was achieved by simply cutting a 45 degree angle on the ends of the whitewood. With everything being glued and trim nailed into place, we sank some screws in to make it official. My handy moving blanket protected the surface of the table while we added some heavy objects from around the garage to weigh everything down as the glue was drying for a tight fit. Lastly, the table legs were cut to even length and we routed each edge with a decorative piece to make them look a little bit fancier than plain studs.

The whole thing only took a couple hours, was well worth the experience, and saved me a stack of loot. The result looks great for what it is, a very solid build, easily handling my entire body weight. Now we just have to uphold the theory; that having a dedicated table just for sewing will promote more use of the sewing machine. Let’s see if it becomes more than just my nightstand.

Now I have another problem; I don’t have a chair. Maybe I’ll make one…

OK so I’m completely ditching the idea of modifying someone else’s design. For one, that’s not my style. Two, it seems not every theme is coded very well (CSS or HTML). Three, it was way more fun building a theme from the bottom up than modding one would have ever been.

Soooooo…. It’s back to the drawing board for me. Err, to Fireworks. At any rate, please ignore this silly little design and know that I will have a much more polished one up soon!

I’ve made some CSS tweaks to get things a little more how I’d like them. Well… at least in this first version. I ditched the muddy reddish color links for a brighter pink. My special someone really likes the color and I enjoy sneaking it into my personal designs. You’ll find it on my soon to launch freelance site as well. The background color was a similar red so I replaced that with dark grey and have the text changing to white. Couple other things here and there to keep things consistent and more to my liking.

Some of the CSS has seemed a bit off from the start. I don’t know if it’s just the theme I’m modifying or what, but stuff seems sloppy or unnecessarily complex for how simple what’s really taking place. I haven’t many heavy changes yet but I may at some point. I’m weary of just deleting or rearranging some of it because I don’t want to go around breaking stuff.

So anyway, some small things may appear whack for the next couple of days depending on how much time I have to look at this, but it’ll get there soon enough!

There are a million pet peeves I have about the terrible average motorist. These people turn what should be an enjoyable cruise into a dangerous life-risking endeavor. That, and they suck (had to work that in somehow).

First up on the rant list: People who don’t know how to yield, merge, or use acceleration lanes. I’ll revisit this topic again I’m sure, but this time around I want to focus on the somewhat common right turn with an acceleration lane. This differs only slightly from a right turn with a yield sign and no acceleration lane, so I’ll go ahead and lump the same group of unaware blockheads together.

OK so you’re kickin’ it at like 45-55 miles per hour and approach an intersection. You need to make a right turn so you merge into the turning lane. The sign looks something along these lines:

Right turn acceleration lane

There is no yield sign, and no stop sign. To stop is to inhibit the normal flow of traffic. So you proceed forth with caution and are now traveling down a new road. You can now choose to merge left into traffic and exit this lane or continue on in this new lane. Well, in theory…

In light traffic situations you typically enter into this situation with no vehicles in front of you and you can keep the flow moving quite easily. Yet, leave work at rush hour and you introduce the average idiot into the equation. There are 3 basic goals a driver has in this junction:

• Continue straight forward in the newly created lane
• Merge out of the newly create lane because it ends shortly (acceleration lane) and continue forth
• Merge all the way across the street to make the first possible left turn

All three pose problems to people who are don’t read signs, don’t care about traffic around or behind them, or are ignorant to the laws of the road. The bottleneck starts here.

Continuing straight can be a problem because the person assumes they are not in a newly created lane and they stop to look back at oncoming traffic to make sure they have room to go forward… even though they don’t need to because they have their own lane. Bottleneck. This is also a merging problem because people do not match their speed to oncoming traffic for a normal merge yet they sit there and try to gun it when a wide spot opens up. Silliness. This applies to the first two goals which are legal goals but are executed illegally by inhibiting the normal flow of traffic.

The third goal is downright illegal from the start. You cannot make one large merge immediately across 2 or more lanes. The only legal move is to merge into the closest open lane and then make however many lane changes necessary to get over to your left turn. Here enters the stupid. These people park themselves right at the beginning of the acceleration lane, often barely before it even starts sitting at the turn itself, and wait and wait and wait for there to be an opening for them to jump all the way across all lanes of traffic. Meanwhile car after car, that could be flowing normally forward, pile up behind the selfishly unaware law-breaking motorist.

A quick honk should startle the perpetrator into noticing they have their own lane and they move on. It can be an honest mistake especially if you have never traveled the intersection before. This rarely happens. Upon noticing they are pissing people off, they normally just ignorantly sit there thinking the person behind them is the jackass. The absolute worst is the dimwit that is trying to jump across three lanes, and that could care less that 10 people have piled up behind them and have to wait with them for no reason. You can definitely use the acceleration lane to merge, and then change lanes really quick… but they hardly ever do.

So now we have someone blocking traffic (illegal) to wait to make another illegal move. Uggggghhhh!!! I’ve tried honking loud and long and you get these deer-in-headlights empty looks like “duuuhhh what” and inching up to try and go around them isn’t even enough to get them to just look where they are going and realize they need to MOVE.

It happens daily. People trying to go straight will sometimes jump in front of them on the right or even the left. Mostly though, you get a small parking lot as traffic just grows and grows behind the moron.

This screenshot from maps.google.com sums up one of my most annoying instances of this lameness in Jacksonville, Florida at St. Johns Bluff and Beach Blvd:

Stupid people love bottlenecks.

So anyway… Stuff like this angers me to no end. Open up your eyes people!!!