Real taco, I’m not so much of a mook but I’ve been told that I know how to hold one down. If it hasn’t been made explicitly clear by now, one thing that significantly contributes to a mook’s day-to-day happiness is good food. Eating is something that we all have to do to survive, but there’s a huge difference between chowing some bullshit to keep you going and truly savouring a well-prepared meal. The size of my ass is a true testament to my favouring of the latter. I fucking love food. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of me standing on a chair in my grandmother’s kitchen helping her stir the gulyás and marveling over how quickly she’d bang out a batch of uniformly folded Hungarian plum cookies. She wasn’t following a recipe on her laptop while doing any of this either. Most of what she cooks has been taught to her and comes together from scratch. One thing that I find really sad, fucked up and scary about our generation is that we’ve lost so much food knowledge. With the overwhelming amount of processed and imported foods that we don’t think twice about consuming, we are so far removed from what we are actually eating and how it impacts our bodies. Very few of us are properly informed about the basics of eating right or how to balance flavors. I know many of you are probably rolling your eyes right now (eat a dick) so I’ll get to the point.

The idea for the Dollarama dinner party came to us while we were taking flicks for the Immigrant Malls post. We ended up in Dollarama about 15 minutes before the mall closed and couldn’t believe some of the shit that we were finding in there. Pregnancy tests and weaves aside, they actually had a surprising selection of food, despite the fact that it was all canned or dry. A lot of what’s available on those shelves falls into the “shit you eat for survival” category I mentioned before. These are not things made from quality ingredients and let’s face it — if you’re doing groceries at the Dollarama, your life game is not exactly on point. I think it was HTO who ultimately came up with the idea of having a Dollarama dinner party — everything from the dishes to the spices had to come from some sort of dollar store. The idea was to morph the barely edible into something that would actually look at taste good.
This is how it all went down.

Shopping. We began by hitting up the huge new Dollarama on Sherbrooke and Wilson and were not disappointed. There’s only one food aisle but it didn’t take long before I was able to visualize the revolting, preservative-laden shit in front of me transforming itself into something that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve to my friends.

Destination Dollar on Queen Mary was a fucking gold mine.For real, I got semi-turned on by the selection of things they had in there. Pickled quail eggs, raspberry coulis… but I already had the core of what I needed to prepare dinner. I copped a few little gems to step it up slightly— stuffed eggplant and salmon pâté — yes, papa.

Here is the 70$ assortment of bullshit that would eventually become a four-course meal.
The dessert. I was determined to make at least one thing from scratch that wasn’t full of xanthan gum and yellow dye #69, so I opted for a vegan chocolate cake — not on some hippie shit, but because luxuries like eggs do not exist in dollar stores here. Peep the science: vinegar and baking soda combined act in the same way that eggs do as a rising agent and vegetable oil replaces butter.

Recipe on the iPhone. Not my grandmother’s way of getting shit done, but baking is a delicate chemistry and if one of the ratios is even slightly off, your shit’s done.

And today on Mooked out Meals, we’re going to be exploring new and exciting ways of incorporating heron into our favorite baked goods.

Ef preparing an amuse bouche.

Most baking isn’t too complicated. Mix wet and dry ingredients separately, then combine and plop into a dish & into the oven. Try it out next time someone invites you over for dinner and/or you want to get laid. Bringing someone a home made baked good is always a good look.

Our frosting was exotic as hell, a fine product of Uruguay. Thanks, Third World!

As we’ve learned from several of Ef’s posts, pre-planning and some form of organization is the key to properly executing any stunt. It was hot as fuck the day that we decided to do this, so in order for the cake to be cool enough to be iced once we were done dinner, it had to be the first thing prepared.

The skyline of Brinesville. Appetizers…

…Not appetizing

If you’re worried that something is going to taste like ripe asshole, frying is a good way to add taste, fat and texture.

Smoke break/spying on the neighbors time. Behold: the immigrant solution to an apartment building sans rooftop pool. You know that the father trolled around hard to Wal-Mart, Zellers, Canadian Tire and the like with the dimensions of the balcony on a piece of paper in his pocket and did not rest until he scored this one. Perfect fit!

We were all really stoked on the canned fried herring, so we were pretty disappointed when we peeled back the lid only to find that it resembled shriveled dick.

Ef, who is not one to discriminate against fish, took one for the team and performed the taste test. Results proved that the appearance was not deceiving. No one else would have to suffer through what looked, smelled and tasted like expired genitals.

Presentation is key. This deviled ham looked like some bootleg Fancy Feast when it first came out of the can…

…but with a quick trip through a piping bag was transformed into a tantalizing little whipped meat rosette.

Same goes for the salmon pâté. With the addition of a little lime juice and pepper, this shit was actually starting to taste good.

The finished products, starting with the steak-spice fried cocktail weenie bites, with pickle and a Dijon mustard dipping sauce.

The artichoke hearts, stuffed vineleaves and stuffed eggplants I pretty much just arranged into bowls because thanks to the phenomenon that is canned food, someone did the prep for me in a factory a few years ago. Simply dump and serve.

Pepper-and-lime infused salmon mousse in a mini vol-au-vent.

I can’t front. Transforming the canned, deviled ham into these pork mousse mini vol-au-vents was one of the most revolting culinary experiences I’ve ever had to endure. Like I said before: it was HOT the day that we did this and my piping bag is made out of nylon, so this frothy dick meat was literally sweating through the bag. It felt like it was seeping into my pores and that I’d for sure smell like pig grundle for the rest of my days. Luckily, this was not the case and apparently these tasted pretty good!

Pretty, pretty good. Shit disappeared quick!

Finishing off the first course right.

The main attraction. These are the ingredients for the second course: a creamy crab, tuna and noodle casserole, meatballs with gravy and potatoes, and bruschetta.

Evaporated milk — I’ve never used this shit in my life, and when I first tried it from out of the can it tasted like straight smegs. The moral of the story is that it saved my ass for this course even though it’s revolting.

For the casserole, I kept it classic white trash — knock-off fettuccine alfredo Sidekicks, which would ultimately be combined with a plethora of canned bullshit, and baked.

This dude was my best friend for the night.

Draining the tomatoes for the bruschetta. I generally like to keep the kitchen clean and try to wipe down after each dish gets done but I figured that seeing as this meal was gonna be grimy as fuck, the exception could be made.

The aforementioned assortment of canned bullshit: tuna, peas and (apparently) crab.

ploploploploploploploplop

Powdered mashed potatoes are against my religion. There is really nothing better than garlic mashed potatoes with a fuckload of butter and cream in ‘em, but that night it was all about the sawdust-in-a-box. Shit looked like someone had collected and packaged their milk mustache crusts for a decade. I did everyone a solid and added a little olive oil, ‘cuz mashed potatoes without fat is as bad as ballsack neglect during a BJ.

Opening up the can of meatballs was like unearthing a hidden treasure in the sense that I was elated to find that they looked like little bundles of pink dog shit, with its accompanying sauce resembling the liquefied, condensed version of the same. Scrumptious.

The best guests never show up empty-handed. Tron scored major points in coming through with his thematically-appropriate take on the Mimosa; Tangpagne.

Texture plays a huge part in food enjoyment. I don’t care if what you’re serving is made from unicorn cheeks and tastes like the Virgin Mary’s breast milk — if it feels like congealed earwax when I bite into it, I’m not interested.

Crunchy textures are generally a good look, so I topped off the casserole with the Dollarama version of Pringles, a sturdy and robust variety of potato chip.

The bruschetta was easy-peezy to put together and both looked and tasted pretty damn good. They had these great garlic-oregano rusks at the Dollarama, which I topped with some crushed tomatoes that I just added some garlic (from a jar, no cheating), salt and pepper to. Sprinkle with some Kraft Parmesan, whose natural habitat is somehow a cupboard, plate and enjoy.

You don’t always have to go balls out on presentation, but notice how some simple dehydrated parsley and artificial bacon bits really add that final touch.

Check Mooksy giving primo fuckface to the nearly open bottle.

Looks like napalm, tastes great. Cheers.

Mooksy legit ate most of that boatful of meatballs. What you see here is the beginning stages of some severe itis, starting with the meat sweats.

Who cares if you’re eating Dollarama chow when you can wipe your mouth with hundred-dollar bills?

Stage Two involves relocating to the couch, smoking a spliff and requiring the support of your head and a throw pillow to rest your arms, now heavy from repetitive shoveling.

I forgot to mention that along with the Tangpagne, Tron also brought along some steak knives which I’ll treasure forever.

Onto the third course- a pallet cleansing mango lassi.

Combine 2 cans of canned mango, half a can of coconut milk, ice and lime juice and blend.Plop a bendy straw and an umbrella in there and you’re good to go. Tastes like bacayshun in a glass, puntangina.

I guess I’m kind of an asshole for emphasizing the importance of presentation and then busting this shit out.

We have now progressed to Stage Three, wherein the afflicted begins to gradually hunch over and the eyes, beady and bloodshot, glass over, making you look like some sort of Disney forest animal.

Tron also brought a bag of osties, which we decided we were gonna make one final creation with, which Osti would have to ingest. That, along with pizza sauce, olives, bacon bits and parmesan would come together to create some sort of shitty pizza.

Being that he was well into Stage Four, the retard-happy full flop mode, he was initially OK with this plan.

Mid-bite, that mood wears off pretty fucking quick.

Back to the couch for Stage Five, involving full horizontality and an inability to keep your eyes open. Completely fucking doneso.

There you have it: the four-course Dollarama Dinner party has come to an end. Some things were better than others but all in all, no one puked (not immediately anyway — Tron apparently violently struggled and vomed somewhere around 5am) and shit tasted pretty good. The white trash casserole, mini vol-au-vents, mango lassies and chocolate cake were the highlights, while the meatballs and some of the canned appetizers that went straight to plate were a little questionable. On the real, my guests were impressed and I have to say that I was too. However, I would NOT recommend following any sort of Dollarama diet, because you’re gonna come down with some World Vision-level malnutrition. The proof lies in the fact that everyone had some severe Chernobyl shits the next day. Stay tuned for the next DDP — AZN Sensation edition.