As of Monday, September 10th at 9AM; yours truly is on vacation.
Right now it’s “Vacation Stage I“:
Cooking yummy food, riding the bike(s), and eating yummy food.
Omelettes, rice pudding, and various pasta and Mexican dishes typically dominate the menu during this stage.
Friday afternoon kicks off “Vacation Stage II“:
Old Fashioned Days.
Live music, dangerous-looking carnival rides, arts and crafts, pedalboat rides, and surprizingly good fair food — representing many different cultures. You can have your funnel cakes and corn dogs, personally I’m a sucker for the Cajun booth;
- Red Beans and Rice
- Beignets
- Jambalaya
- Shrimp & Andouille Gumbo
- Crawfish etouffee
- Who knows, I might even snack on some gator on a stick!
Ayeee! That’s some fine eating! And the whole thing takes place literally a stones throw from my luxurious domicile.
Saturday night brings the Balloon Glow which really is the highlight of the event (not to diminish the fun of watching the constant stream of illegally parked cars being towed away just below my kitchen windows.) Ahhh…. Schadenfreude!
Sunday things wind down early but the delicious smells linger into the evening.
Monday will be a big ride day. I never get to ride on Monday!
Then Tuesday kicks off Vacation Stage III - The drive to Indianapolis to shower Mom, Aunt Donna, and my step-father with their extravagant and opulent birthday gifts. Then Wednesday we’ll have the big Adkins-approved meat feast and while everyone is recovering/relaxing and enjoying their new treasures, I’ll sneak in a bike ride.
Then it’s back home for Vacation Stage IV,
bracing myself for the return to work and apologising to Caldonia for leaving her alone for 2 whole days.
So, I was grocery shopping bright and early this morning when a display of pies caught my eye. Marionberry pies.
“I don’t even know what Marionberries are”, I muttered to myself.
I burst into laughter as my mind immediately conjured the grainy FBI surveillance video of disgraced, then inexplicably re-elected Washington D.C. mayor, Marion Barry smoking crack with his mistress in a hotel room.
Yep, it’s quite a life; 5AM, shopping at Kroger, laughing at pies.
Have I mentioned that I’m easily amused?
There are several reasons that I have never eaten, and plan never to eat, a Hot Pocket. The main reason has nothing to do with the bit (see video here) that Jim Gaffigan does about them in his stand-up routine (that is one of the reasons, though).
My reason? I can’t hear the name without automatically thinking ’snot rocket’.
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Yuck! Why on earth are you writing about ’snot rockets’?”
Why? Two words… grass pollen.
Oh, and if you are an eater of Hot Pockets, good luck not thinking “snot rocket” from now on whenever you bite into one.
You’re welcome.
So, the other day I was lamenting the fact that while you can get custom printed M&M’s (which seems cool until you find out how much they cost), they won’t print anything that is “potentially offensive or inappropriate”. And believe me, they cast a wide net in defining what’s off-limits. It’s just like those uptight weasels at Nike and their personalized shoes; always ruining all my offensive and inappropriate fun.
It was suggested that perhaps I should find a way to market products to this untapped niche. Immediately, I knew exactly what I would call such a venture:
Vulgar Mofo’s!
Vulgar Mofo, creating customized profane and obscene products for the discriminating foul-mouthed bastard!
There truly is no off position on the genius switch!
So, several years ago at work, there was a large piece of Butterball turkey breast in the refrigerator which was over 3 days old and therefore destined to be thrown out. Being frugal (and hungry) I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste, so ignoring the voice of warning in my head, I commenced to eat it. After about an hour of blissful snacking, the angry rumbling from my gut announced that I had made a mistake. I spent the next 12 hours in misery, having the lesson driven home. Abdominal cramps, fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea; the whole shebangabang. After surviving this ordeal, I vowed never to repeat my mistake.
Fast forward to the weekend before last. There I was again, at work, looking for something to eat, when I discovered a package of sliced ham (sandwich meat) in the refrigerator. According to the date, it had been opened a week earlier, but it seemed okay and I figured sandwich meat has a pretty good shelf-life.
So, I ate it. Just as before, my stomach let me know pretty quickly that I had made a mistake. Unlike previously, despite some pretty intense nausea, I didn’t puke (which was probably also a mistake, in retrospect).
No vomiting, no diarrhea (either of which would have been welcome); it was as though my system decided to tenaciously hold on to the tainted meat, the better to teach the lesson. The cramping went on for days; the sweaty, feverish, achy, hit-by-a-truck feeling came about 24 hours in and it was nearly a week before the pain and bloating subsided.
Damn, I’m stupid sometimes!
I won’t do that again (gee, that sounds familiar).
Being a big fan of spicy foods and hot sauces, I was thrilled to discover that the McIlhenny Company has an online country store. Even more exciting was the discovery that they sell their various sauces in gallon jugs!
For years I’ve enjoyed canned Chipotles in adobo sauce (my Chipotle smashed sweet potatoes are to die for!) so when Tabasco came out with a Chipotle sauce, it was love at first taste.
The only problem was; with it being more flavorful and somewhat milder than regular Tabasco, I use a lot of it, and can only find it in 5 ounce bottles, which don’t last long.
What do I put it on, you ask? Well, just to name a few; it’s fabulous in or on any kind of eggs (fried, scrambled, hard-boiled; you name it), it’s just the thing to give boring pizza a little bite, and it plays amazingly well with potato chips or Fritos. Naturally, almost anything I cook is flavored with some type of hot sauce.
Well, my days of paying $3.49 every couple of weeks for a 5 ounce bottle of this magical nectar are over!
At $45 delivered to my door, that works out to just $1.76 per 5 ounces. I’d be a fool not to take advantage of a money-saving opportunity like that!
So, after considerable research into the “Greg Evans Diet Plan“, there has been a slight revision. Instead of subsisting solely on pie for an entire week each month, the new plan calls for dedicating just one day each month to pie-eating exclusivity.
This day shall, of course, be known as Pie Day. This is not to be confused with Pi Day, which just happens to coincide with my birthday. The annual triumvirate of these occasions (Pie Day, my birthday, and Pi Day) shall cause the festivities to be expanded into Pie Week, out of honor, respect, and appreciation for pie, pi, and the esteemed founder of Pie Day, yours truly.
I am confident that Pie Day observances will meet with much greater success than my previous failed, discredited, and subsequently abandoned research into ‘Beer Day’, ‘Vodka Day’, ‘Rum Day’, and the always exciting ‘Tequila Day’.
So yesterday I took the Pista out for a spin. I was feeling pretty good, hammering up the slight hill by the park Pantani-style. Some time later I noticed an odd pain in the back of my left knee (the “good” one). Analyzing the evidence I realized that I had, apparently, hyper-extended it, going all Marco P on that hill before I’d had a chance to warm up. I thought briefly about turning around and going home, or of stopping and flipping the back wheel around to the 17 to make things a bit easier. “Nah, screw that; I’m riding!” I decided, soldiering on. As my ride progressed I realized that I might have made a mistake, as the pain in the back of my knee grew more incessant. Still, though, I made no concessions (I’m stupid that way).
By the time I got back home I knew that I had definitely hyper-extended the knee (it’s a pretty specific pain, one that you remember), and that I probably shouldn’t have ridden (especially the fixed gear) on it. I also knew it would be fine, but that it would probably keep me off of the bike today (I’m not that stupid).
I consoled myself with the thought that it might rain, and overnight it did rain a bit. There was a front pushing through, so it was very windy all day, which was some solace. Then we had some pretty intense thunder storms this evening; even a tornado warning for a bit so, in the end, I felt much better about not getting to ride.
The good news? My house didn’t blow away, and my knee is much better, hardly hurts at all. Oh, and I ate tamales all day!
Those of you who have been keeping score at home know that I love tamales. Specifically, tamales from Bernard’s in Midland, Texas.
Those of you who are, like myself, conversationally illiterate in español probably have a pretty good idea what I got for my birthday.
Anyway… my wonderful, sainted step-mother, Terri (no, I’m not trying to butter anyone up!) called the other day to let me know to be expecting a belated birthday gift; a parcel of tamales, as per an earlier conversation. Then she dropped the bomb… she sent ten (10!) dozen!
I had to laugh when she was telling me how she was a bit grossed out by the ingredients listed on the case (yes, I’m now one step closer to mastery of the dark art of tamale making). Along with all of the expected players, they contain pork snouts.
“Snouts?” I thought to myself,
“They’d have to be made from brains and anuses before I’d be too grossed out to eat them.” Actually, I’m not entirely sure that would keep me from eating them, but it probably would squelch my desire to cook them.
Anyway… I was a little nervous about them arriving still semi-frozen, or at least somewhat cool, but assuaged my fears by reminding myself that tamales were originally created (at least in part) as a means of preserving meat in the days prior to refrigeration.
The package arrived, right on schedule; a case of 120 tamales packed with blue-ice packets, inside a larger box. Tearing into the box, I found that they were, indeed, still cold. Digging deeper I discovered that those in the center of the case were actually still frozen.
I decided that the first thing I needed to do was to divvy them up into freezer bags and get the reserves into the freezer. Immediately I realized the folly of this course of action and grabbed a pot, put some hot water in it, dropped in the steamer basket and loaded it up with precisely as many tamales as would fit and still allow the lid to go on. Then I busied myself with getting the rest packed up and stored safely away.
By the time I finished with this, my kitchen was filling with that most heavenly aroma and it was tamale time (it’s like Hammer Time only greasier and with less dancing). After inhaling 2 or 3, I had to call to share my elation with Terri. I got the machine, left an effusive, barely coherent message of thanks, then turned my attention back to my tamales. Before they knew what’d hit them I had devoured that steamer load and plopped down, satiated, to contemplate my bounty.
Life is good. Happy birthday to me!
…to drink cheap coffee! A while back I decided that I was going to invest in some premo coffee. Of the various coffees I’ve sampled through the years, Jamaican Blue Mountain is my favorite. So, I embarked on a quest to find JBM online at a (somewhat) reasonable price. I found bluemountaincoffee.com which has prices a bit lower than most.
“What the heck?” I thought, “even ‘cheap’ Jamaican Blue Mountain” is bound to be good.
So, I ordered myself a pound of their Blue Mountain Peaberry. It came a few days later, and as I expected, it wasn’t the best/freshest that I’ve had, but DAMN! It makes one fine cuppa joe!
Almost everytime I fix a pot, my mind replays the kitchen scene* from “Pulp Fiction”.
“Damn Jimmy! This is some serious gourmet shit!”
Thankfully, I never have to dispose of a bloody car and a headless corpse after I enjoy my cup of coffee!
* AKA: “The Bonnie Situation”, DVD fans.
Here’s how it works:
One week a month, you subsist exclusively on assorted varieties of pie (and yes, of course cheesecake counts as pie).
Now, I’m not claiming that this has any health benefits or weight-loss potential, but who the Hell cares? You get to eat pie!
So, a few days ago my lovely acrylic and stainless steel peppermill fell from the shelf above the sink and dropped all of 18 inches into the sink. I didn’t think much of it, put it back in its place and went about my business. Imagine my horror when I next tried to use it only to discover that the grinding mechanism had broken free from the body and it was beyond repair.
Anyway… I did some research and according to Cook’s Illustrated (From America’s Test Kitchen) and Alton Brown (who has never led me astray in the past) Unicorn’s Magnum Plus
is the absolute zenith of peppermill functionality.
I was somewhat non-plussed by its appearance (a big black plastic cylinder… I was hoping for something in stainless steel or copper), but it has a lifetime guarantee, and according to the experts it excels at what it does.
So, I went ahead and got it and let me tell you, this thing rocks! The coarse/fineness is infinitely (and easily) adjustable, it holds scads of peppercorns, and it cranks out an insane amount of pepper per twist.
One of my other concerns was that due to its design, you can’t do the old “remove the top and attach the cordless drill” trick (à la Alton Brown), but as it turns out, it grinds so much more efficiently than any mill I’ve used before I can’t imagine this ever being necessary (quite unlike my recently departed peppermill, which ground so slowly that I frequently resorted to this technique).
So, if you are in the market for a peppermill, or you’re just tired of cranking endlessly to deliver the appropriate dose of pepper; the Magnum Plus gets ‘Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval’.
