It was getting pretty close to noon and my wife was busy and I couldn’t talk any of my girls into making me lunch so I pouted and went unfed for another hour.

Then I decided to end 2011 right and make myself the epic Barnyard Special. I invented this dish and the name, BTW.

Here’s how I did it, in all it’s glory:

The Barnyard Special

First you will need the following ingredients from about any ole barnyard:

a cow

a turkey

a pig

a chicken

a garden

More specifically:

a little milk

some boneless turkey slices

some boneless ham slices

5 eggs, unless you have to start over and only have 4 left

one fresh green onion

not so much black pepper

Lowery’s Seasoning Salt

First thing ya do is crack all 5 eggs into a skillet. Throw away the shells. Turn the burner on about medium. The add a little skim milk. Mix it all together. Now add a little black pepper…

Ok, here’s where things started to go oh so wrong. The lid came off the pepper shaker.

Nice.

Don’t dump the heavily peppered eggs into the trash, dump the eggs into the garbage disposal. Start over. I used 4 eggs this time. I kinda wasn’t as hungry as I thought.

Hmm. I think before I turn the burner on I should cut the other ingredients. So back up and don’t do the other steps yet.

A few comments on the ingredients. Turkey is good for you. Add that. Ham is not, but it’s salty and that tastes good, add that. What about onions? I love onions but I don’t like to add them to eggs. They tend to overpower the mildness of the eggs. I use a crisp fresh green onion instead. And Pepper Jack cheese is awesome right now. Add that.

Also, I don’t use any table salt. Don’t need it (see ham comment above). However, I did add a little Lowery’s season salt. That gives it a nice interesting favor. I guess I did add salt, so ya.

There. Looking good as it should.

Ok, when things start heating up make sure you simply push the eggs across the skillet with a plastic utencil thingy. Don’t use a metal one. If you started by using a metal one put it in the sink with the other stuff you shouldn’t have used.

Awesome. Just like that.

Now when the eggs get nice and clumpy add in the other barnyard ingredients.

STOP! Don’t add the cheese yet. No.

Gotta get the eggs pretty much close to done. Otherwise you will keep asking your wife, “is it done, is it done? And she’ll say, “I can’t tell because you added the cheese too early and I’ll say, “huh?” And she’ll say, “I can’t tell if the eggs are done because the melted cheese looks like raw eggs.” I say, “oh, good point.”

Ok, so here I decide to add some other kind of cheese, it was in the fridge and we use it for mexican food. Not sure what kind. Let’s call it yellow cheese.

Just look at this beautiful presentation. I’d so do this live on Good Morning America if they asked me.

And it tasted sooo good.

BTW, wanna know how I made these awesome screen shots with titles? I used Skitch.

“The Barnyard Special™” is a trademark of Zipop.com. All rights reserved. But you can totes use it if you want.

I hate Spam. I also hate spam.

It’s the latter I would like to whine about just a little.

There are many reasons to hate spam. Here are three.

1. It insults ones intellegence:

Sure! I’ll send this info off to you right away! But what do I get in return? I’m not stupid ya know.

Oh! Wow! You had me at all those zeros, Mr. Wong! I bet that’s not even his real name.

2. I don’t want what they’re selling.

I take that back. I could use the family pack of Viagra, please. Family pack? What family? What? Wha?

3. I don’t understand you:

Looks like a day’s archive of my teenagers text messages. Seriously, if you would make the type a little smaller and use some punctuation, we’d be all good. Heck throw in some tildes and a few umlauts and we’d be speaking the same language.

Don’t really have a point here other than to say no one likes it but that doesn’t mean we still don’t have to eat it.

It’s an important debate.

Today I shall compare and contrast these two battling cereals to see which one rules the marshmallow based cereal category for ultimate surpremacy.

First, let’s take the encumbant, General Foods’ Luck Charms.

Been around since 1964.

Great name, great brand. Nice Irish mascot, originally called L.C. Leprechaun AKA Sir Charms.

Lucky Charms are housed in the traditional standardized cereal carton, with plastic bag inside.

But let’s get down to the food itself.

The small funky shaped frosted cereal bits are a little Cherio’s-like. An oaty taste. Not bad. Again, kinda small. The smaller shapes give less frosted taste. There is not enough cereal mass for the sugary flavor to burst.

The marshmallows win on style and theme, pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and of course green clovers, etc., etc.. They even have colors embedded in colors. Nice.

They don’t call them Magically Delicious for nothing.

Nutrition: Don’t care. If this is a factor, your eating the wrong ceral. Try Special K or somethin.

Price: $3.89 for this 24 oz box of sweet goodness. Or about $3.26 per pound.

Now let’s take the challenger, Marshmallow Matey’s.

I’m assuming the Malt-O-Meal people got pretty tired of getting their oats handed to them by their cross-town Minneapolis rivals, General Foods so they decided cold cereal was their true calling.

Mr. Malt and Mr. Meal probably got together and said, “O!” (hence the O in the name) and decided in order to compete, they have to win at price. But do they win on taste? Seems like people will spend there life savings for a box of cereal. That crap is expensive!

MMs date or origin is not known, probably within the last 10-12 years. Dunno. Don’t want to look it up.

Point goes to Lucky Charms for being the first to market.

The name, Mashmallow Matey’s is a funny name. The name says, “we’re not trying very hard, cause we’re cheaper so screw you. Heck make fun of our name, we don’t care. It was between that and ‘Chucky Larms’ and the lawyers had a fit so, yeah.”

Point goes to Lucky Charms. Great branding. And half point for embracing diversity with the little Irish fella. Cause isn’t that what it’s all about?

MMs are packaged in a pain-in-the-pantry plastic bag. Prolly for cost reasons.

We’ll give a point to Mashmallow Matey’s for cost savings.

Now let’s get down to it, shalll we? The sugary joy itself…

Enlarged to show texture.

Check out the girth of the MM plane cereal bits (pictured left)! They’re freakin huge! This is good because as I said earlier, it’s about giving the frostiness it’s due.

Point goes to Marshmallow Matey’s.

Now we’re down to the marshmallows. It’s the primary selling proposition, it’s the core competency. It’s all about the little freeze dried marshmallows.

They are both fairly even. They both are multiracial, multi colored so plenty of Red 40 and Blue 1 and Yellow 6. Just what your child needs to jack up their ADD count. If you kid was recently punished at school for slapping the janitor, you can blame this stuff.

One point to Lucky Charms, one point to Marshmallow Matey’s.

So how well do they both last in milk? Remember as any cerealist would tell you, it’s good to have an equal blend soggy to crispy ratio.

Point to Marshmallow Matey’s. Again it’s the biggness that matters here.

Price: $2.34 per pound.

Here’s some more scrooginess for ya.

I don’t read my friends’ and families’ Christmas form letters. Nope.

I got one word for you form letter writing folk:

Facebook.

Yeah I pretty much hate Facebook too now but seriously.

I can see pics of that vaca your bragging about on Facebook.

I can see pics of your kids playing in the snow on Facebook.

I can read all about the surgery your Dad just had on Facebook.

I don’t need your misspelled-ridden, poorly thought out drivel.

Hey I do appreicate the advanced motor skills your lil progeny has. And I don’t doubt they can play the glockenspiel better than me.

So spare me the Christmasy letterhead letter written by some mysterious third person. And what’s with that anyway? Are you trying to suggest you are way too busy to write me a personal note so you have Alice T. Housekeeper ghost write it for you?

Get creative.

Go to the local photographer and do one of those cleverly themed family pics, like where everyone in the photo is hugging their little doggy wearing matching sweaters sitting in a tree while the family cat is below lighting the tree on fire in disgust. Or somethin.

I do dig the matching denium shirts, or matching sweaters all on their cell phones, with mullets, etc, etc.

I only have one request: Keep it Kardashian classy.