Me: What was it?
Wife: Gestures for me to lean towards her so that the kids won't overhear what she has to say; I saw two women kissing in there!
Me: Did S (Daughter who accompanied wife on trip to restroom) see?
Wife: No.
Me: (Excitedly) So, what did they look like?
Wife: You wouldn't be interested. They were not television lesbians.
Me: (Disappointedly.) Harrumph.
*It has been a long time, but the main differences (that I can remember) are that he did not pre-cook the onion and used bread crumbs instead of cracker crumbs.
First: Make the stuffing by dicing and then cooking one medium sized onion till golden, Then add fresh parsley and/or celery--the leafy top parts are best. This is done in a fair amount of olive oil, butter, ghee (clarified butter) or some combination of these.
Next, cover the bottom of a well oiled metal baking pan or ceramic dish with crumpled (just crush in your hands) Ritz crackers. Choose a vessel just large enough for the fish to fill it in one layer. It is easiest to entirely fill the area available if the fish is cut into roughly 2 oz pieces.
Prepare a coating for the fish by mixing (this is for around one pound of fish) 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sour cream and a tablespoon or two each of mustard and mayonnaise. Coat the fish on both sides and lay gently onto the crumbs in the bottom of the pan.
Crush Ritz crackers into the cooked onion stuffing in the pan you cooked the onion in and gently mix with your fingers. It should take around twice as many crackers for the stuffing as it took to coat the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the fish evenly and then bake at 330 F for around 30 minutes.
You can test if the fish is done by looking to see if the flesh is opaque. The dish should be very moist but not soupy and the topping just starting to brown. Serve with fresh lemon. The mustard and sour cream give a bit of tartness, so you may find yourself using less lemon or skipping this condiment for this dish.
First, I released the hound. Well, our Caviler King Charles Spaniel, from her crate and took her for a walk. Normally my wife does this as it is primarily her dog, but it is nice for her to sleep-in every once in a while.
While everybody was sleeping, I set about roasting coffee. Yes, I am aware that it can be purchased pre-roasted but it is far better, in terms of the cost of quality beans and freshness to do this yourself. It does smoke-up the house and is a pain and is still well-worth the extra effort.
After breakfast, my wife had plans to make a few ground beef intensive dishes and so I did my part by grinding the meat. Again, it is cost and quality; nice chuck roast is inexpensive and makes a far superior hamburger than what the store grinds for you, also it is fresher when you do it yourself.
There is some definition of luxury as having things done for you and I can see the logic in that. But for me, a more important kind of luxury is having a superior experience; a perfectly cooked meal or a great tasting cup of coffee. Work provides rewards. If you work hard at your job, you will generally make more money, with which you can get more or nicer things. By the same token, extra work in your home life pay off in the same way. The effort of being a skilled cook pays-off in inexpensive yet fancy eating.
Necessity intrudes though. The unremitting snow this Winter has resulted in ice dams and a bit of leakage into the house. Today was relatively warm and drizzly, a combination which will transform the two and a half feet of snow on the roof into an even larger problem. The situation demanded action! Up on the roof I went, snow shovel in hand.
Nothing could be closer to civilization than the roof of a suburban house. Yet, in the thigh-deep snow, I felt like a wilderness explorer. The work was very physical in that it took a lot of strength as well as aerobic effort. It is also a two story house, so mortality was on my mind. As it was, the troublesome ice dams provided a flat surface along the edge of the roof. The slope helps but the huge volume and mass of the snow to be removed has left my body in a jelly-like state almost 6 hours later.
Necessity is reactive and sucks. All the effort is just to avoid consequences which are greater than the effort it takes to prevent them.
Juice one lime. Lemon is okay if that is all you have. Juice from the little plastic lemon or lime is NOT okay.
Open two small avocados or one large one. They need to be ripe! Your best bet is to buy them a few days ahead of time and then make guacamole once the fruit yield to a gentle squeeze.
Mash the avocados into the bowl containing lime juice. The reason you do it in this order is that the avocado flesh turns brown very quickly when exposed to the oxygen in air. The citrus juice prevents this.
Add around 1/4 cup of finely minced red or yellow onion and a similar amount of chopped fresh tomato.
Add a jalapeño or other hot pepper--finely chopped or a few shakes of Tabasco Sauce is good too.
Complete with garlic powder, cumin, salt and black pepper. You may also wish to add a couple table spoons of sour cream. Minced crispy bacon is also a nice touch.
Detail...
Sauce, Three cheeses (Mozzarella, Gruyère and Asiago), Hot Italian sausage, Olives, Artichoke Hearts, Red Onions, Jalapeño Peppers, Fresh Mushrooms and Crushed Garlic.
I worked from home yesterday and went running on my lunch hour. I only had a couple of minutes therefore to put-together a lunch and all we had that was easy was some left-over pulled pork. Naturally, it would go on a roll. Roll number 2.
It was a broken night: Kids had dance lessons, wife had karate etc. The kids ate early and we ate late, like 9:00 PM. So we wanted quick and easy. We always keep frozen hamburger patties on hand, so that is what we had. The rolls were uncut and so this time I cut mine (#3 for the day) into thirds. The middle piece got toasted on both sides while the top and bottom got only their insides toasted. I went for the Big Mac effect with shredded lettuce, diced onions, dill pickle and thousand island dressing. It wasn't a Big Mac, but was Big Mac like enough that I was well pleased with it.
Here is what happened. My wife & I were students living in Pullman Washington and we must have somehow used-up too much of this box to leave enough for another meal. If it had been spaghetti, there would have been no problem--it would have just been combined with the next box of spaghetti. But we didn't often use linguine and I don't like to combine different shapes because then some of it is either over or under done.
We baked a lot then and ever since, and so the box became our source for done-ness testing probes--you stick a toothpick or spaghetti noodle into a baking cake and see if it comes-out dry.
This box made a meal in Washington and provided probes for baking in two homes in Vermont and one here in Massachusetts. Now it is all gone. The end of an era and probably the only foodstuff we still (until about a week ago)owned from our first year of marriage.
The same thing happened today!
Or would have: A hawk had a squirrel pinned down in our yard and the dog got all excited by the four of us jabbering and pointing. Naturally, she wanted out. My wife was afraid for the dog's safety as the hawk was really big and our dog is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (A breed of small, weak and fairly unintelligent dogs). I let her out anyway and she dashed toward the raptor with either no fear, or more likely--no sense.
The hawk, which had its back to the onrushing dog, was startled and flew away without its lunch. The squirrel was still alive and had wit enough to run up a nearby tree. The dog kept its record of never killing a mammal (she is an insect mass-murderer) though not from lack of trying. As it was, she was very excited and ran around the yard for some time after the incident.
The bird did not go far. It alighted in a tree about 100 feet away and stared at the dog in a menacing way. I am not sure that carnivorous birds can stare in a non-menacing way, so perhaps I shouldn't take too much from this. I imagine though, that the hawk was sizing up our little dog as potential prey.
(8:09.45 per mile) 1386.46mi
I really think that I should be doing 8:00 (or less) per mile since most weeks are at least slightly under that. The problem was that November and December of 2009 I was injured and then I really didn't start running again until we got back from India in the middle of January 2010. I had to do long runs, which are always a bit slow, because the Boston Marathon is in April and so distance training cannot be put-off forever. The problem was that on days when I did short runs, I either couldn't go under 8:00 or it would be only slightly under that. By the end of April, I was up around an average of 8:35/mile and so I worked it down to 8:09 over the course of the year.
Boston is again approaching but 1. I am not injured. 2. I am in better shape since I have been running. So my plan is to do a long run, such as today's 14 miler in 8:35/mile and then not do another long run until I have beaten the average back to 8:00 via short fast runs. I may have to abandon this if I am getting too close to marathon time and not getting in enough long runs, but it is the plan--for now.
December (7:50.1 per mile) 92.69mi
November (7:51.26 per mile) 122.88mi
October (8:02.19 per mile) 147.63mi
September (8:07.75 per mile) 115.69mi
August (7:49.95 per mile) 93.73mi
July (7:52.12 per mile) 93.05mi
June (8:00.28 per mile) 121.95mi
May (7:59.09 per mile) 99.17mi
April (8:27.99 per mile) 98.38mi
March (8:26.77 per mile) 173.98mi
February (8:38.14 per mile) 158.76mi
January (8:31.17 per mile) 68.55mi
In the first one, I was going to the middle school to drop-off Dahlia's bass. The visitor parking is toward the end of a circular drive way and on the left--the same side as the school. As I approached the parking spot, I noticed a car parked illegally just before the visitor parking. The lady nonchalantly and without looking, pulled in front of me. I was going slowly, so it was easy to brake and avoid crashing into her. Since I didn't honk my horn, I feel confident that she remains blissfully unaware of the close-call. If we both had our heads in the clouds, then we would have blown the rest of today dealing with towing, insurance and police.
Later, I was driving through a busy part of town and a woman made a left-hand turn to come across oncoming traffic and into my lane just ahead of me. I had to slam-on my brakes and it was still a very close call. It looks like she had pulled into the oncoming lane, thus blocking it, just prior to her stunt. I can only conclude that she is dangerously stupid.
Here are the three:
1983 Toyota Tercel, seen here in the yard of our house in Vermont.
1997BMW 318ti. On a ferry crossing Lake Champlain.
2011 Subaru Impreza at Alewife Station parking garage.
There is a kind of progression here: The first was front wheel drive, the second was rear wheel drive and the latest is all wheel drive. The Tercel had a displacement of 1.5 liters, the BMW 2.0 liters and the Subaru has 2.5 liters. Lots of continuity too: All are blue, four cylinder hatchbacks with manual transmissions.
It is nice to set-up a puzzle over the Christmas vacation time. There is a lot of idle time and it can't all be spent a'bloggin', so this makes a good diversion.
This particular one is a bit small with only 400 pieces, but since it is a USGS map and all the parts look a lot alike, it was plenty hard. This was a custom novelty item where they make a map of your hometown with your house in the center of the map.
This year the stars aligned:
I happened upon some USDA Prime grade boneless rib roast at COSTCO late last year. The prime grade is usually hard to find since it makes up only about 3% of American beef.
I dry-aged the whole roast for a couple of weeks. This has the effect of making the meat more tender and concentrating the flavor.
Cooking: I gave the roast a good 2-3 days to fully thaw and let it sit-out on the day of cooking (Christmas)until it was nearly room temperature. I preheat the oven to 500F while the meat is prepared. I rub the surface of the roast with a paste of olive oil, black pepper, kosher salt, fresh rosemary, crushed garlic and brown mustard. Immediatly upon putting the meat in the oven, I reduce the heat to 170F (which is our lowest setting) and then cook until it reaches medium rare(145F). The roast is covered with foil and a kitchen towel (for insulation) and let rest before carving.
Massala dosa and red chutney, Toast with orange marmalade and coffee.
Should have used the flash, too late though since the meal is in my tummy!
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