Pork - The Other White Meat

We have decided to give the grill another go for 2007. On Friday, we cooked some chicken. I've pretty much got that down now. I just have to grill 8 minutes on each side and perfection. Well, I haven't done pork yet and we has some pretty thick chops sitting in the freezer.



Nancy threw them in the fridge to thaw out on Friday night. Well it didn't quite work for us to grill them up on Saturday since we had plans during the day and Nancy had to be at work at 3PM. So, we decided to grill them up today.



Unfortunately, I'm not skilled in cooking pork. So, I called my brother, Impwerx, up and asked for some advice. He simply told me to treat the pork like a steak except that I need to tenderize the chops. He told me to give it an extra kick, to switch the Worcestershire with apple sauce and to add a smidge of cinnamon.



Well, I don't own one of the meat tenderizing mallets. Nancy came up with the idea of using the rolling pin. Since the meat was still vacuum packed we could pound the porkchops as much as we wanted without worrying about making a mess.



We didn't have any canned or bottled applesauce, but we did have those little snack pack applesauces that are meant to go in lunch boxes. Those applesauces also had cinnamon already in them.



So we got out or handy vacuum marinader that we use with our Foodsaver. Nancy opened up one of the snack packs of applesauce and laid it down on the bottom of the container. I rubbed in the Montreal Steak Seasoning an both sides of the chops and laid the meat down on the bed of applesauce. Then we put the rest of the applesauce on top of the chops. We vacuum packed the container and let it sit in the fridge for an hour.



With the exception of my running out of propane half-way through the cooking process, it was pretty painless. Those suckers were juicy and the applesauce combined with the seasoning came out rather nice.



We will be definitely adding this to our list of grilling recipes.

Eviction

Who are you to ask me to leave?

I made you who you are today.

I gave you all the riches you hold so dear.

You can’t get rid of me that easy.

I am not a tumor that can just be excised.

I am your excuse, your alibi.

I’m who you fall back on when things go wrong, when life is unsure or you don’t know which way is up.

I’m not going to go quietly

I will raise hell

You begged me to be here

You begged me to never leave.

I make you feel right, I make you feel strong,

I make you feel loved when you were alone in this world.

I’m that family member that came to a visit and never left

I am the stray dog that you decided to feed.

Your fear feeds me

Your anxiety justifies me

Your lack of hope ensures my tenure

So you say that you are done with me

That I’m unhealthy for you

I’m not that easy to get rid of

Cause I’m that monster under your bed

Get rid of me if you can

I’m your second skin

Get rid of me if you want

But you’ll end up asking me back

So you say that won’t be happen

I hope you are right

Cause if you don’t your life will be naught

White and Nerdy

I actually stumbled across this awhile back, but a coworker has brought it to my attention in a whole new manner.

This is an awesome parody by "Weird Al" Yankovic, but I think Donny Osmond in the role of Krayzie Bone from the Chamillionaire video. He is hilarious.

The Mighty Battler of Accumulated Sleet

The mighty battler of accumulated sleet

Well, as some of you may know, I live in Oklahoma City now and if you've been watching the news you'd know that we just got hit by some severe winter weather.

Nancy and I have been pretty much cooped up since Friday because we've had a constant barrage of sleet falling on our fair land.

Nancy wanted me to dig out the front stairs as it fell, but I felt we should wait until most of it had fallen. Well, that day happened to be today (Sunday).

So, I dug out my thermal shirt and my old snowboarding gloves and face gator and went outside to tackle the sleet.

Nancy had the intelligence and foresight to purchase a snow shovel before the frozen stuff started to fall. Unfortunately, after sitting on the stairs for a couple days, the weight of the sleet must've melted the stuff on the bottom because we had a good half inch of ice on the stairs with about 4-6 inches of sleet on top of it.

So, the snow shovel was kinda useless. Fortunately, I still had my landscaping shovel that we purchases when we built our flowerbeds at the Houston house. It has a flat blade instead of a curved one. It proved to be quite useful.

Nancy came out and took a few pictures because she needed some winter weather pictures to go with some scrapbooking embellishments that she had in her collection.

After getting the stairs scrapped, I had to salt them. So I went to the garage and grabbed one of the 2 fifty pound bags or salt Nancy had purchased with the snow shovel.

Well, it became heavy quickly. I had to walk around the entire complex to get from my garage to the front stoop. So when I got to the stairs, I couldn't hold onto the bag anymore and it fell out of my hands and hit the ground. Well, the bag blew it's sides out and there was salt everywhere.

Fortunately, Nancy brought me a large Ziploc plastic container that I used to scoop up the salt and get it onto the stairs.

Well, now the stairs are clear and I have a sore back, but it was a good outlet to blow off some steam.

Happiness Is...

Waking up in the middle of the night, expecting it to be almost time to get up and finding you still have 4 hours of sleep left.

The Overprotective Mama

On my way home from work, I decided to stop by Subway to pick up a foot-long Italian BMT on Parmesan Oregano. This was about 7PM and I was in a tad of a hurry because my shows were starting to come out of the Christmas/New Year hibernation the networks put them into.



Unfortunately, there was a line. The line was moving quickly but there was this lady in front of me that kept getting out of line, poking her head out the door and giving the hand signal that one gives to say "stay there". On one of these trips she looked at me and said, "I have to check on my kid".



I can understand a couple checks while in line, but she was doing this every couple minutes. She even did it a couple times while the people were making her sandwich. I was just htinking to myself, "Wow, either this lady has an unruly kid who cannot be trusted to stay in the car, or she's very overprotective".



Well, I finally got my sandwich and paid for it and this lady was walking out the door right in front of my. She took a hard right out of the door and I saw her child. It was a golden retriever tied to the handrail on a set of stairs near the store. Now, everything made sense. Dogs think that a few seconds out of your sight in an eternity, so a couple minutes must've been unbearable. So she had to go keep reassuring her loved one that she was still there.



I just chuckled as I walked to the car.

Power Tools......Not just for the Y Chromosome Anymore

As has been the trend lately, I have been been out of town on business, but I had the benefit of being home between Christmas and the New Year. The whole time I was home, Nancy was attempting to get me to hang curtains in the guest bedroom.



All I could remember was the frustration of hanging the curtains in the bedroom. Since they were some meaty curtains that we were hanging in the master bedroom, the curtain rod had to be hung such that the screws were hitting wall studs. For some reason the stud finder wasn't properly detecting the studs because whenever I would attempt to pre-drill a hole I just hit blank space. I took forever to hang those curtains and a lot of choice words were loudly blurted out.



Now, the room Nancy wanted the new curtains hung in are the same as the master bedroom, so I didn't really expect it to be much better. Plus, the curtains once again required a well hung curtain rod. To add to the frustration is that we were missing some screws for the curtain rod. So, I just kept telling her I wasn't going to do it.



I'm a perfectionist when it comes to fixing things and building things. I don't want to start a project unless I know, without a doubt, it will be completed with some semblance of perfection. This of course has led to many projects not ever getting started. It's probably the main reason why I haven't ever proceeded with my desire to delve into the fine craft of woodworking. I don't want to begin a project unless I know I can do it with success.



Well, I digressed.



So I came home from my latest adventure abroad for work and found that Nancy hang just got tired of waiting for me to do it. The Dewalt cordless drill was out and the curtains were up. And the problem of there not being enough screws. She took that complex problem and gave it a simple solution.....just don't put two screws on each bracket.

Firefly

Here in OKC we have a HD channel from Universal. They play, in excellent HD quality the movies and TV shows produced by Universal.

One of those shows is Joss Whedon's Firefly. I happened to attempt to keep up with this program when it originally aired. But as has happened with many a good show that the networks don't have faith in it got canceled.

Well, I have recently started watching it again. I must say that it was a very good show. I wish it hadn't died.

I must say. George Lucas said that Star Wars was supposed to be a Western in space. What Joss Whedon created with Firefly really is a Western in space. You have people using 20th Century ballistic weapons, riding horses and wearing western-style clothing. But they fly spaceships.

I know that Joss Whedon put out a movie a while back called Serenity in order to tie up loose ends, but I cannot figure out why people didn't want to watch this show.

This show was definitely nothing like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I didn't find some entertainment merit out of it.

Oh well, maybe the day will come soon when a show can still be successful but not rely solely on the network airtime to be successful. That way a good show, with a solid fanbase can still be made

Happy New Year

I'm sitting here on the couch trying to get my receipts into Quicken, when midnight hits and at that exact moment my cell phone rings. It was Nancy calling from the ER.



For those who have followed this blog, they know she isn't calling from the ER because she's a patient, but because she is working there. She managed to be away from a patient room at the stoke of midnight to fire off a quick "Happy New Year".



That sure made the night a lot more tolerable. I didn't think it would bother me too much to be spending New Year's Eve all alone, but it did. Nothing like ringing in the new year with the "ka-ching" sound of the Quicken application as I key in entries.



Nancy was only able to give me a quick call because as of midnight they were crazy busy in the ER and all predictions were that it was only going to get worse. I sure hope that she gets to come home on time at 3AM, but knowing how idiotic people are during those holidays that seem to revolve around the bottle, it's probably going to be a nightmare for her.