Normalcy Returns (or Long, Rambly Post About Not Much at All)

Things finally returned to a semblance of normalcy over the weekend. After all the planning, prepping and celebrating, we discovered that the inside of the house was one mountain of crap piled upon others, and the outside looked as if the prairie was threatening to reclaim the land.

Now I've long loathed yard work, so much that I've considered buying a goat. However, since I can barely handle taking care of a dog, I'm not sure I could do much better with a goat. Besides they smell funny and they scare me (I once watched one attack my brother; true story - he was posing for a picture, and the goat looked up with hate and malice in his eyes, lowered his head and butted my brother right into the ground. Then the goat kicked sand in his face and laughed at him . . . or something like that. My memory gets a little rusty at times).

In any case, the yard needed some major therapy, so I woke up bright and early Saturday, dug out the lawn mower and got to work. Afterwards, I discovered that using a weed eater that's falling apart can be a painful experience (those little cords hurt! And the rocks and crap it kicks up? Not fun at all).

Finally, I broke out the tree trimmer and started working on the tree in front of the house. For several months, I've watched pedestrians duck as the low-hanging branches threaten to take off their heads, and while I found it funny for awhile, I realized that standing on the front porch while laughing and pointing at them wasn't a good idea. Plus, I recalled that things like that annoyed the hell out of me in my dog walking days, so the branches had to go.

In short, I remembered again why lawn work tries my soul.

However, it wasn't all drudgery over the weekend. I also broke out the new toy - some friends bought us a deep fryer for a wedding present. Now, I realize that this might seem like a Bad Idea. I love fried foods. I also have a marked tendency to burn the bejeesus out of myself while in the kitchen, and I'm not above setting off a grease fire here or there. However, I'm happy to report that the inaugural fried chicken did not cause me or the kitchen to light up like a bonfire - and it was cooked through! Now I just have to remember not to cook everything in it. One of my life goals is NOT to have a heart attack before I turn 40, and a deep fryer in the kitchen probably won't help that too much.

Basically, it was a pleasant, mundane weekend; something that's been missed around here for quite some time. Can't wait to have a few more.

Cooking With Gas No Longer

Things have settled down since the wedding, so I've been able to return to some of my more mundane enjoyments: namely cooking. I celebrated the lovely weather Tuesday night to fire up the grill and fix some bratwurst.

However, this time I decided to mix things up a bit. The latest Cooks Illustrated inspired me to try something new. First, I sliced up an onion, dropped the slices in a bowl and seasoned them with a little salt, pepper and thyme. I microwaved the onions, then placed them into an aluminum tray and placed the brats on top.

The plan from there is to put the wrapped foil tray on the grill for several minutes, letting the fat render from the brats onto the onions, and then remove the brats and finish them on the grill. Unfortunately, my grill simply doesn't generate much heat.

When I moved into the house, the grill was built in, which is a nice feature, except that over the years, I've learned that it simply doesn't get very hot, and when you're grilling, very hot is where you need it to be.

And after this experiment, which after awhile turned out okay, I'm done with the gas grills. I have a very small charcoal grill, and after using it a few times over the last year, I'm ready to move up to a larger charcoal model - I like the flavor better, I like the hotter fires, and frankly, it's more fun cooking with charcoal.

Any suggestions or favorite models? I'd love to hear it.

Out of Registration

"Where are you going with that?" Darcy's voice rang out behind me as I slinked away from the dinnerware set aisle carrying the registry scanner. We were registering for wedding gifts one fine Saturday not long ago.

"I just wanted to check something out," I said, smiling (I hoped) convincingly.

"Towards the snack aisle!"

Damn. I'd been made. Time to retreat. I returned the scanner to the cart, foiled again.

You see, I had a plan. All I wanted to do was inject a little life, a little levity into the whole gift registration process. Anyone could register for plates, cookware or tablecloths. After working at Target for years, and seeing couples register for the same things every time, I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be different.

I thought registering for 200 bags of Doritos would do the trick.

Unfortunately, I might have let this plan slip out at a less opportune moment, and by that I mean when Darcy was around. She didn't seem to find it nearly as entertaining as I did.

"If you do that, your friends will buy 200 bags of Doritos," she said.

"True," I said, thinking of salty, nacho cheesy goodness.

"Are you going to be able to return 200 bags of Doritos? Do you want to explain it to the store?"

Granted, it may be a hassle, but think of all the fun the store will have taking them back. Well, most of them -- It would be a shame to not open one, two, or ten bags.

Unfortunately, in the end, my genius was appreciated more by my male friends than the female ones, and I relented and agreed to no Doritos. Or dart guns. Or plasma televisions.

I said nothing about Fritos though. Time to hit the registry . . .

Crawling Out of the Weeds

Before I start here, I want to thank everyone for the kind wishes and thoughts in my earlier post. I really appreciate it.

Now, on with the inanity . . .

Christmas crept up on us this year, and by Sunday I was starting to sweat it. Sure, the shopping was finished, but there was the little matter of the seven people we were having over for dinner. The house was a wreck and the fridge was bursting at the seams with provisions. Fortunately, we had a plan.

As Darcy made a pie Monday night, I brined the turkey (If you ever do anything with a turkey, you should brine it - I'm not kidding I brine most pork or poultry these days, and it's well worth the time and effort). And for a brief moment on Tuesday, it looked as if the plan would hold together.

Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've never cooked a turkey before. Chicken? Yes, I've baked, fried, stuffed, sauteed, and broiled many a chicken, but their larger cousins somehow eluded me all these years. So with a hearty laugh of bravado and a healthy belt of cheap whiskey, I prepared to cook the best damned turkey that ever graced a Christmas dinner.

First, I lugged the cooler containing the brining bird out of the sunroom, where it spent the night. I pulled it out along with the lemon halves, cinnamon sticks and bay leaves - I stuffed those into the bird itself. Then taking advantage of a little trick we'd learned - flip the turkey over and cook it breast-side down - all the juices flow into the turkey breast, making it that much more moist and juicy.

Yes, it looks ugly, but let's be realistic - who carves a turkey at the table? If I tried that, my guests would be covered in grease, skin and scraps of meat. Plus, if I'm using an electric carving knife, someone's going home without a nose or a finger or two. And when they leave the house, covered in turkey trimmings and bleeding from various cuts, all the stray dogs within a five-mile radius will descend upon them.

And folks, that just wouldn't be pretty. Not at all.

So after inserting the thermometer into the thigh, and inserting a second one into another part of the bird (I don't trust my remote thermometer. It tried to kill me earlier this year, and things just haven't been the same since), and dropped it straight into the oven.

A few hours later, I checked my lying-ass thermometer, which said the bird was a good 155 degrees, meaning it had to come out soon. The backup said it was 180 degrees. That was bad. That meant I'd overcooked it, and I would be serving my guests Jack-in-the-Box. So we took it out, and after poking and prodding it with both thermometers, we decided our 18 pound turkey was finished cooking.

In three hours. Three short hours.

An hour before everyone was slated to arrive, I started carving the turkey. I became a little concerned when I flipped it over and discovered the temperature-popper-thing hadn't popped out. I became more concerned when I cut into the turkey and found the meat had a nice pinkish-red look to it the deeper I cut into the bird.

Last time I checked, raw turkey is probably not high on most people's delicacy list. And unfortunately, stuffing it into the oven wasn't an option - I was trying to turn cornbread soup into cornbread stuffing.

We decided a little cornbread stuffing would be a great accompaniment to dinner. After a little poking on the internets, I found a recipe, which I doubled, only to find the contents of the bowl didn't resemble stuffing so much as it resembled a bowl of runny scrambled eggs.

Fuck it, I thought, and chucked that bad boy into the oven. I checked it 30 minutes later, only to find I had a nice cornbread soup going. So I did what any smart cook would do . . . I turned up the oven and hoped some of that liquid would find its way out of my stuffing.

Unfortunately, this pan took up valuable real estate in my smallish oven, and if I didn't want to poison our guests, I had to do something with the turkey.

After poking around the kitchen, I found some baking pans. I carved up the bird, and dropped the pieces into the baking pans along with some pan drippings and I covered it with aluminum foil. An hour later, I took them out of the oven.

And I'll be damned if it didn't work. The turkey was edible (and quite tasty if I say so myself), the stuffing, while still a touch moist, was pretty good, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Most importantly, no one complained of stomach pains or other food poisoning symptoms.

So after eating a fine meal, exchanging gifts, and scaring a poor innocent family as they watched me play Scrabble, Darcy and I flopped down on the couch together, and enjoyed a successful, if somewhat stressful Christmas dinner - hopefully the first of many.

Unfortunately, the magic Christmas elves didn't find their way into the kitchen, which looked as if someone ransacked it during a tornado. And even though I swore we'd be ringing in the new year before we'd see the kitchen counters again, we were able to shovel our way through the mess, returning things to the status quo.

Rambling Post-Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving was fun as always, but this year we had an extra reason to be thankful. Meet my nephew, Aiden. In addition to being awfully cute, he very quickly figured out how to work a crowd, which served him well at assorted Thanksgiving dinners and open houses over the weekend.

As for the long weekend, it was hectic and very busy, including time spent finishing a job I started a couple of weeks ago - pulling up the carpeting on the first floor of my house. After studying the underside of the carpet, I've come to the conclusion that someday scholars are going to discover that the name Trudy descends from ancient Aramaic and translates into "very small bladder". Egad. There might have been one or two spots on the dining room floor she didn't hit, but I sure wasn't seeing them.

Saturday was spent at the aforementioned open house for Aiden, where he was exposed to birthday cake for the first time. Apparently, he wasn't a big fan of sweets, until Darcy gave him the cake she'd baked for him. Now, he's a thirteen-month-old sugar junkie, crawling the floors of his new home, looking for a fix.

Or maybe he's just crawling. I hear kids do that, after all.

In any case, Aiden is back at home with his new family and settling in nicely by all accounts. Welcome to the family, Aiden.

Random Musings

After much hand wringing, debating, and household disasters, we finally set a wedding date, so things are finally moving along on that front. In about six months, Darcy and I will get married on a sunny Jamaican beach. Unless it rains. Or a hurricane hits. But right now, I'm aiming for an optimistic outlook.

Other things I've been chewing on lately:

• After two weeks of trying, I'm giving up on Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Typically, I find the stories behind the underground or indie music scene to be fascinating. However, this book continues driving home a simple truth about many rock and music stars: they're narcissistic fuck-ups. And really, if I wanted to learn more about fascinating narcissistic fuck-up, I'd read (or update) this blog more often.
• I actually started watching more television this year (thanks DVR!). I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but interestingly, the shows with better pilot episodes (Chuck, Reaper) are falling flat on their faces, thanks to their paper-thin premises, while shows with so-so pilots (Bionic Woman) are slowly improving. The writing is still fairly clunky and cringeworthy, but the show is in serious danger of not taking itself too seriously. And really, any show that features Isiah Washington getting kicked square in the nuts isn't half bad.
  
• Watching DVDs of The Wire. This show makes me wish I'd ponied up for HBO. This is what Homicide could have been without all the "input" from NBC. Luther Mahoney was clearly a prototype for Avon Barksdale, and watching the case against Barksdale develop over the course of the season (I'm on season one) has been a hell of a ride. I'm dying for the next DVD to arrive courtesy of Netflix.
• Wanted: uses for apples. I think we're going apple picking tomorrow, meaning my kitchen will be overrun with approximately 20 lbs. of apples. I like apples. I like apple pie. Hell, I like applesauce, but I'm hoping there might be a few other options out there. Suggestions?

That's all for now. I need to get back to actually being productive. Enjoy the weekend!

Burger Reconstructed

I woke up Saturday with a spring in my step and a song in my heart; it was going to be a lazy Saturday. We had no plans; I could sit around in my shorts, drinking beer and slowly feel my brains ooze out of my ears while watching bad television all day.

Unfortunately, I failed to consult all the stakeholders in this particular plan, so an hour later, I was busy vacuuming the house after putting clothes away.

In any case, I wasn’t complaining; I still had a plan. I still had outs. I was going to wait until later in the day and fire up the grill.

As I sit and enjoy an early-evening summer breeze, burgers would be cooking not three feet from me, and nothing goes better with grilling than an ice-cold beer.

However, fate decided to go ahead and kick me in the shins once again.

I pulled the meat out of the freezer only to discover that the bag had split open, leaving a chunk of meat freezer burned. No problem; I could just toss that small piece after it thaws. After wrapping the meat in plastic, I dropped it in cold water to speed the thawing process . . .

. . . only to discover, 30 or so minutes later, that water had seeped into the plastic and waterlogged the ground beef.

Now I had soaked ground beef, and worse, the water washed away a lot of the juice from the beef. So we had cold, flavor-free beef soup. Not appetizing.

I considered going out, but I wanted to grill, dammit! I needed a plan . . .

Basically, the hamburger meat needed something to help it bind together, and some fat to replace the washed-away fat. I decided on a mixture of breadcrumbs and butter. The butter would replace some of the lost fat and the breadcrumbs would bind the meat together. And if it didn’t work, then what the hell? McDonald’s wasn’t that far off. After adding my patented mixture of garlic powder, kosher salt, pepper, onions and cayenne, I was ready for the experiment to continue.

Surprisingly, the grilling went fairly well. There was some flaring due to the butter content, but the burgers held together very well. However, due to crumbling fears, I decided to cook them up to medium-well to well done instead of my usual medium-rare.

The results?

Not bad. Not good, but not bad. The breadcrumbs gave the burgers an almost meatloaf-like consistency, which we didn’t really enjoy much, but the flavor was fine. Next time, I might use fewer breadcrumbs.

Or not dowse the beef in water without making sure it’s better sealed first. Or just not get out of bed in the first place.