God Bless Hardee’s…

USA Today – A cheeseburger sold as a foot-long sandwich, with three burgers and three cheese slices, is being tested at 50 Carl’s Jr. restaurants in Southern California and 50 Hardee’s units in Indiana. That’s the same chain that introduced the world to the 1,400-calorie Monster Burger and the Monster Breakfast Sandwich, with 47 grams of fat.

“We live in a society that’s fascinated with all things big,” says Scott Hume, editor of BurgerBusiness.com, an industry trade site. “It’s inherently American to push for something bigger and better than anyone else has.”

The foot-long burger idea was hatched two months ago from a product development chef at Carl’s, says Brad Haley, marketing chief. The chain is especially eager to create products that appeal to its core customers: young men ages 18 to 24. “Obviously, the foot-long sandwich has been very successful at Subway. But we decided to do it the Carl’s way.”

That means big — and controversial. The sandwich has 850 calories with 20 grams of saturated fat. It’s served on a white sub roll, sliced in half and wrapped in butcher paper.

If it’s a hit in testing, it could be sold at all Carl’s and Hardee’s — sister chains in different regions of the country — within three to six months, Haley says.

Responds Haley, “I’d rather have a charbroiled, foot-long cheeseburger than a cold, foot-long deli sandwich any day.”

Say what you will, but I love the fact that Hardee’s is up front about their food not being the most healthy option out there.  But boy, is it tasty.  I love that Indiana is a Hardee’s test market as there is always some sort of odd creation that they’re touting.  I may have to give the footlong burger a whirl…I only wish they had a Mushroom & Swiss option.

Mmmm…free beef…

Get ready America. It’s time for a star-spangled celebration of…roast beef! To celebrate the red, white and blue – and help America save some green – Arby’s, the home of the free and the delicious, is offering its new Junior Deluxe sandwich free, with any drink purchase, on Monday, July 5.

The latest addition to Arby’s Value Menu, the Junior Deluxe features oven-roasted, thinly sliced roast beef, topped with crisp, fresh lettuce, ripe tomato and mayo on a toasted sesame seed bun. The Value Menu, which launched in April, features Arby’s signature offerings starting at $1.

“We’re thrilled about adding the Junior Deluxe to the Arby’s Value Menu,” says Steve Davis, chief marketing officer, Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc. “The July 4^th fireworks may be over, but this sandwich will help people close out the weekend with another kind of explosion – a little ‘kaboom’ for their buck.”

Free Junior Deluxe Sandwiches will be available during normal business hours on Monday, July 5, with any drink purchase, excluding Value drinks and coffee, at participating Arby’s locations nationwide. This offer is limited to one per person while supplies last. Consumers will need to ask for their free Junior Deluxe with drink purchase to receive the offer.

For more information about Arby’s Junior Deluxe giveaway, please visit http://www.facebook.com/arbys or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Arbys.

Via SeaCoastOnline:

PORTSMOUTH — A pizza delivery person bringing an order to a city residence on Saturday was met by a naked man for the fourth time, say police.

According to the city’s public police log, at 5:42 p.m. on Sept. 26, police were called to a Holiday Drive residence where the delivery person said “when they deliver pizza there the resident comes to the door naked.” Police Lt. Rodney McQuate said the delivery person has encountered the naked resident during four different pizza deliveries, but did not wish to press charges.

So it’s apparently 4 strikes are you’re out in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  After the first time I’d be wary of showing up again. And after the second time I’d definitely not be coming back again. But maybe that’s just me.

How are you going to celebrate National Pancake Day?  I’ll be sitting in my kitchen munching on some delicious homemade apple pancakes and bacon.  Then I will be getting ready for a day of great college football games (including Notre Dame vs. Purdue).

One thing that I find interesting about designated “days” is that there’s often nothing that really makes it “official”.  If you search for “National Pancake Day” the most prevalent date that shows up is February 24th because in 2006 International House of Pancakes (IHOP) began serving up free stacks of pancakes that February.  But looking around some more September 26th shows up as an unsponsored National Pancake Day. And I will be celebrating.

You’ve been watching football for three days straight (and possibly four or five). You’ve been throwing football parties and/or attending football parties the entire weekend wrapping it up on Monday night.  It’s now Tuesday and you don’t feel like cooking & don’t really feel like eating any more chicken wings, chili, pizza, burgers, chips or any of the other seasonal food you’ve been eating nonstop for the past few days and will resume eating next weekend.  But you digress as you don’t have the desire to go out to eat either.  Plus you have that fridge full of leftovers.  So you eat the leftovers and claim that you’ll make your friends and family take home the leftovers next week (or go to their house instead). But in the excitement of the games you forget that and you’ll do it all over again every week for the next four months. And sometimes you won’t have hosted the football parties and still end up with a fridge full of football leftovers. But this is football season and you don’t really mind one bit.

Eating shrimp #115

Tonight was the night for our 6th annual Shrimp Fest at Red Lobster during their all-you-can-eat shrimp offering. This year it was Kurt, Jennifer, Jeff and I joining in the fun.

(more…)

• 100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter -I’ve got some catching up to do.
• 2009 Italian Street Festival – Not sure I can make this.
• 2009 Vintage Indiana Wine & Food Festival – Sounds good too, but I’m not sure I can make it either.
• Crystal Classic Habanero Sauce – R.I.P. to the best hot sauce I’ve had to date.

Welcome to “Would You Rather”, the part of Blue Shotgun where Brian asks you, the readers, given two choices, would you rather…

1. …be chased by monkeys or be stranded in the desert?
2. …go to Walt Disney World for a day or take a week long cruise?
3. …eat a juicy steak (best cut of your choice) or eat a gourmet dessert (of your choice)?
4. …watch sci-fi or “reality” TV?
5. …be unemployed or work as a janitor?
6. …have tickets to the Super Bowl or tickets to the entire World Series?
7. …fly in space or fly in a hot air balloon?

Please reply in the comments section or leave a voicemail at 317-565-4250. And by all means, feel free to explain why.

It’s officially winter here in Indianapolis.  Snow is in the air and coating the ground just enough to cause chaos for the folks who every year forget how to drive in the snow.  As I went out this morning to go to Hardee’s (apparently they got rid of the Hash Rounds in favor of “Country Potatoes”…which were good, but I was wanting my Hash Rounds) and the bank, I witnessed a handful of people spinning tires, sliding around and locking up their tires as they just smashed the break instead of letting up for a moment.  And this was in a mere 2 mile round trip.  I know that we all side around in the snow a bit in the winter, but come on guys, an inch of snow shouldn’t cause such a commotion that it closes down I-69 due to the number of accidents.

Eating shrimp #82

Tonight was the night for our 5th annual Shrimp Fest at Red Lobster during their all-you-can-eat shrimp offering.  This year Jeff joined Kurt and I for the fun.

Here are the rules:

• You must eat a biscuit
• You must eat your salad (sans “veggies”)
• You must eat your side (mashed potatoes in my case)
• You can only eat “normal” sized shrimp (tail on, no popcorn or minis)

102 Shrimp Tails

I’ve been undefeated for four years running (I’m not sure if that’s something to be proud of) and my previous record was 81 shrimp.  This year I went for triple digits.  Here’s the breakdown:

• Jeff: 53 shrimp
• Kurt: 87 shrimp
• Brian: 102 shrimp

Jeff didn’t do too bad for his first attempt.  That’s probably close to what Kurt and I did the first time (I don’t recall the number for sure, but know it was far less than 70).  Kurt set a new personal best and better than my previous record.  And I raised the bar by 21 shrimp over the prior record and 15 shrimp over Kurt’s new personal record.  But this took around an hour and twenty minutes since it takes a while for each order to be cooked, so none of us will be beating Joey “Jaws” Chestnut any time soon.

And I have to give a shout out to the Blue Shotgun Twitter followers for following along and making this even more fun.  In particular mikerccie, mdsf, maya311 & bnpositive. And be sure to check Jeff out on Twitter too.

Now the glutton season has officially been kicked off.  We’ve got oodles of candy coming up, followed by big birds, Christmas hams and the New Year’s get together.  It’s time to fatten up for the winter.

[If you have any similar stories you'd like to share, please do so! If you want to leave a voicemail for Utter Oddcast, that number is 317-565-4250. And we did record the audio for the entire meal, but we'll have to see what, if anything, we can pull out of that...the best comment of the night was in reference to the FFA Convention at the table behind us when the waiter said "Good luck with that."]