Disclosure: Long John Silver’s sent me $35 worth of “treasure checks” to use to sample their new Freshside Grille menu and write an unbiased review. I used $15 worth of the checks to sample their menu, I’m giving away the other $20 worth.

Shiver me timbers, but I had never eaten at a Long John Silver’s before this month. My family had a handful of fast food restaurants we patronized – McDonalds, Arby’s, Hardees, White Castle, and a place in Crawfordville called Rax that I thought went out of business ages ago, but Wikipedia says it’s still operating in some locations. I never stepped a boot inside a Wendy’s or a Burger King until high school when my friends invited me to these places or worked behind the counters there. This is particularly odd considering that LSJ is part of the Yum! food brands whose headquarters is in Louisville, Kentucky where I grew up.

I didn’t even know Long John Silver’s was a fast-food style restaurant. I thought it was a sit-down place like Reb Lobster or Joe’s Crab Shack, which are the only other seafood restaurant chains I’m familiar with. However, they sent me some “treasure checks” to sample their new Freshside Grille menu, so I wasn’t going to turn down free shrimp.

I could tell when I walked in that they were heavily promoting this new menu option because there was a huge lighted sign on the wall (which I posted above). I looked at the menu and saw that I had the choice of three main courses – Grilled Pacific Salmon, Grilled Tilapia, and Shrimp Scampi. Each meal also came with a vegetable medley (which sadly did not play music for me), seasoned rice, corn with butter oil (strange how it’s butter oil and not butter) and a breadstick. (You can’t go anywhere without getting a breadstick.) I ordered the tilapia meal which looked like this.

The cashiers saw me snapping photos of the menu and the food, which probably made me look like a secret shopper. Also known as mystery shoppers, these are people who take on assignments to order certain foods or ask certain questions of employees so companies can check up on their stores. I looked into doing it once, but didn’t think a free meal was worth all the trouble. The cashiers walked by a couple times to clean and get water, but if any of them asked about my camera I was prepared to tell them, “Don’t mind me, I’m just a blogger…Arrrrgh!” Public embarrassment over picture-taking is just a job hazard.

I unwrapped the item in the yellow plastic bag to behold, OMG, corn on a stick! This made eating the corn so much fun, almost like it was a corn-flavored ice cream treat instead of a vegetable I would probably see in my poo a day later. Eating food on a stick makes it much more fun. I want to eat all my food on a stick!

The meal was tasty and I’d definitely order it again. I entered the restaurant for lunch hungry, and left feeling surprisingly full. Then I looked at the little nutrition card I picked up at the register and figured out why I was so full.

The entire meal comes to a total of 765 calories. Damn! I only ate half my rice, so I probably consumed 630 calories, but that can still be pretty hefty if you’re on a 1200 calorie diet (which I’m not because I would DIE, or at least stop menstruating). However, if you trash the breadstick it goes down to 595 calories and if you act like you’re at a wedding and toss the rice, it gets down to 325, a much more acceptable number. If you order this meal, you probably shouldn’t eat everything they give you, but the same can be said of most restaurants. Do the math and figure out what works for you. The salmon meal also has an additional 35 calories in the main entrée. They all cost $6.99, which came to $7.62 with the 7% sales tax in Indiana….or no it doesn’t. Huh, I think they should have charged me $7.48, but it’s not my money, so who cares? I don’t know why they charged me 9% tax, unless there’s some secret seafood tax I don’t know about.

The only question I have left is why do they spell it “grille” instead of “grill?” When you add the “e” it refers to the grille on a car or metal grilles on your teeth. You’re not going to get any copy editors eating at your restaurant with spelling like that.

On the way out of the restaurant there was a bell by the door with a sign that said I should ring it if the meal was good. I enjoyed the meal and fish is a good source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, but I figured the cashiers were sick of hearing it rung day after day and was rather surprised they hadn’t ripped the ringer out of it already.

Now, if you’ve read this far, you can participate in my giveaway! I’ve got four $5.00 treasure checks left to give away. I’m going to give two people $10 worth of checks so they can try the meals. If you want one, comment on this entry by 11:59pm on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 using pirate talk. A winner will be drawn randomly. Get on it, me mateys!

See its plastic, mayonnaise-proof covering? See its overly designed pages? See how I’ve collected all my favorite recipes into one binder?

Recently I’ve received several requests for recipes I’ve given a thumbs-up to which presumably won’t make the scale numbers go up too. I also talked to a food blogger a couple months ago who said the weekends are her highest traffic days because people search for recipes on the weekends. I put one and one together, and I didn’t get three, so I’m going to start posting my favorite recipes on the weekend for those of you who want to try new dishes.

We’ll start out with Catfish Tuscany (made with orange roughy in Indiana).

I was strolling through the fish section of the grocery store when I saw the big yellow “Manager’s special” sticker slapped on a package of catfish. I’d never eaten catfish, but I love cats and I love deals, so I bought it. Then I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. So I got on the internet and found a tasty recipe for Catfish Tuscany. (It’s scary to think how hard life would become if the Internet broke. I might have to go to the library or something.)

The recipe included ingredients I already had and looked rather simple, which are my main two requirements when choosing a new recipe. However, it also required me to use the broiler. Oh no! Not the broiler! I’d never used the broiler before and anything that heats up to 500 degrees scares me. However, cooking at such a high heat seriously reduces cooking time, so I tried it. The result was a yummy dinner that my brother liked so much he actually wanted the recipe.

Catfish isn’t always the cheapest fish at the supermarket, so I now make this recipe with orange roughy or tilapia or whatever I have on hand. I once tried to cook it in the oven at 350 degrees, but it made the butter run like Paula Radcliffe. I suppose the broiler crisps it and prevents that from happening. Here’s the recipe:

Catfish Tuscany

4 (4 ounce) fillets catfish

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 Tablespoons margarine, softened

1 1/2 Tablespoons mayonnaise

4 sun-dried tomatoes, sliced thin

Preheat broiler to 500 degrees. Coat a broiling pan with nonstick cooking spray. Brush both sides of fillets with lemon juice, and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place fillets flat side up on prepared pan.

In a small bowl, mix Parmesan cheese, butter, and mayonnaise.

Broil fish about 4 inches from heat for 6 minutes. Remove pan from oven, and turn fillets over. Spread the cheese mixture evenly over each fillet. Top with tomato slices. Broil an additional 4 to 6 minutes, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Recipe for Catfish Tuscany originally published on AllRecipes.com

Parsnips

A parsnip looks like an albino carrot. Could this be the work of Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit who sucks vegetables of their juice? It also looks like on organic baseball bat, so if ever an intruder were to break into my apartment while I was raiding the fridge, I could probably grab a parsnip and beat him death with it. Now that’s a handy root vegetable!

After taking this home from the grocery store I looked up its glycemic index rating and freaked out a little when I discovered it was 97. The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly a food is digested and how fast it raises your blood sugar levels. A spoonful of sugar rates at 100. So at first glance it looked like I might as well be chewing on raw sugar cane as snacking on a parsnip. However, while the GI measures your response per gram of carbohydrate in the food, it doesn’t measure how many carbs are actually in that food. That’s what the glycemic load is for. The GL multiplies the glycemic index by the percent of carbs in the food, and luckily the GL for a parsnip is only 10. For comparison, a baked potato scores around a 17. *sigh of relief* Also, why does eating have to involve so much math? Because I love to eat pi, that’s why! (har, dee, har, har. ? jokes never get stale.)

I sliced up the parsnip and roasted it in the oven. I might have sprinkled some spices on there, but I can’t remember because this was weeks ago. I do remember that the parsnip was pretty tasty, kind of sweet but crunchy. I’d definitely eat one again, though I might keep a spare in the fresher drawer to beat off vampire bunnies.

Radishes

When I steamed the radishes in the microwave and they made the water a pretty pink color. They also did not go bad even though I stored them in my fridge for a week and a half. And that’s about all the nice things I have to say about radishes.

I’m not too crazy about that name to begin with. A “radish” sounds like some anti-biotic resistant mutant strain of a rash. I can just see a doctor telling some poor patient, “I’m sorry, Mr. Jones, that’s not just a rash you have on your arm, it’s a RADISH!” *cue dramatic strings*

I tried seasoning the radishes with some salt, but they still tasted somewhat bitter. The only thing that might make them more palatable is to drench them in other seasonings and butter. I can’t see myself ever having an incessant radish craving. They reminded me a bit of the turnips actually. If I had just returned from 40 days starving in the desert and stumbled upon a radish garden, I would eat them happily, but otherwise I’d pick another vegetable first. They might work better just as a garnish on a salad instead of a main meal in themselves.

ETA: Okay, evidently steaming radishes is really weird. I promise to eat them raw from now on. Y’all can stop telling me I’m a weirdo now.

Fish

Okay, I realize fish aren’t located in the produce section. I’ve never seen a fish garden with little fishy heads poking out of the dirt. That would make an awesome surrealistic painting though, or a cool gag to play on someone with a vegetable garden after buying a dozen plastic fish at the dollar store. Regardless, I wanted to mention that I’ve been trying some new fish. Why? Because there was a sale, of course!

Recently I’ve eaten flounder and tilapia and ocean perch, as well as an old favorite of mine, orange roughy (which in a blatant display of false advertising is NOT orange). Is it just me, or do most fish taste the same? They’re like the tofu of the ocean, they just take on the flavor of whatever you serve them with, be it lemon juice or a feta and spinach spread. Granted, salmon has a distinct taste, and I suspect there are other types of fish that have their own distinct flavor, like catfish or bass perhaps. However, if you’d served me a bite of each of these three fish I really wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. There may be many fish in the sea, but I can’t tell them apart. However, they have those good omega-3 oils and they don’t taste bad, so as long as they aren’t full of mercury I’ll be happy to keep munching on their tails.