Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Morning Sedition R.I.P.

Air America is doing one of the stupidest things they have ever done in killing Morning Sedition. This is really bumming me out. It's a great show and it is a big part of my day every day. And I've e-mailed and written and signed petitions and even bought Morning Sedition merchandise from the Air America website. A lot of people have tried to keep the show on the air. I feel powerless and ignored. Worse than that, Maron was out part of last week and Riley is out this week. So they are killing it and giving us 7 straight days of, well, not crap, really, but sub-par shows. They are better together than apart.

Not much in the world of show biz gets to me, but this does.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Turkey Hangover...

So Thanksgiving was great all day long. We didn't stress out much. I cooked all day. All of the food came was delicious. I actually had a fortunate accident. My grill ran out of gas while cookng the ham and I had forgotten about it for a bit. I think that saved it from being burned to a charred inedible lump. And Lola's stuffing was delicious without the veal. Maybe I'll cook it that way every time from now on. Family recipes can evolve, right?

Here's some pictures:



Here's me at the grill...




...and Rachel's turkey perfection...



...and folks round the table.




After dinner, I hit the whiskey shelf in the Tiki Lounge. Perhaps a little too hard.



I really enjoyed the holiday. And yesterday was the first day in months that I just relaxed and didn't worry about anything. Nothing to do. No creeping deadllines. Lots of good leftovers to eat. Today I'm putting up the Christmas lights and cleaning my office. Tomorrow I'll watch football and do a little work in the office to get ready for next week.


All in all, it was a great start to the holiday season. The only thing more I could have asked for would be for my parents, my sister, and my new brother-in-law to be here. But we raised our glasses to them all. And I've got a little shot of Knob Creek here to take the chill off while I string up the rest of the lights.

Cheers, Paul! (*gulp*)

Thursday, November 24, 2005

So now I'm just waiting...

...for the Chocolate Chip Walnut Pumpkin Bread to finish baking. 33 minutes or so to go. I added some white chocolate chips because the batter looked a little boring. When the bread is done, I can go to bed. Which will give me about 6 and 1/2 hours of sleep. Then I have to get up and face the gruesome - prepping the turkey. I gag every year pulling out the giblets and whatnot.

I don't think I have enough time to get in to the whole Wal-Mart thing.

So maybe I'll just go read. I'm reading Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again - How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)." It's a bit tedious in parts and hard to follow, but I don't know how else the information could be presented. There are thousands of reported irregularities and dozens (hundreds?) of clearly deliberate misdeeds. I heard him on what will probably be the last live outside the studio broadcast of Air America's Morning Sedition a couple of weeks ago. And went right over and bought it.

By the way - Killing Morning Sedition is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. The show is consistently brilliant. Rather than kill it, put Springer in Rachel's spot and bump everyone else up an hour. I can't tune it out here in the boonies, so I have to Podcast it. And I do, daily.

Did I say, "Happy Thanksgiving?"

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Quick Update...

...I left a message on my Mom's answering machine asking what she would substitute for the veal. I had it cooked before she called back and I told her I substituted a bit of ground turkey and some ground beef to get the beef flavor and keep it tender. She said she didn't realize veal came from cows - thought it was from another animal, like lamb or something. That's funny to me. Once she was cooking a $60 roast and I asked what she was going to do to it. "Oh, just a little salt an pepper." I flipped out. "Mom, where's your garlic?" I had to borrow some from the neighbors.

We used to joke that my Mom's recipe book was an address book - The pizza place, the Chinese place, etc.

But then I'm on the other extreme - I made a rub using $20 worth of spices in my spice grinder and $10 worth of Southern Comfort for the mop on my $25 ham on the rotisserie.

Don't get me wrong - I love my Mom's. She just drives me a little nuts when I let her.

And I really wish she and my Dad were going to be here tomorrow.

I really enjoy cooking, but shopping...

...ehhhh, not so much.

As I type this, my hands smell of cinnamon, sage, marjoram, pepper, mustard and fennel, with a hint of sweetness to it from the sugar in the mix. I just rubbed down the ham that tomorrow will spend two and a hours on the rotisserie grill out back and then be thrice drenched in a Southern Comfort and molasses mop over the course of another half hour.

And I'm about to go make Lola's stuffing. Lola was my great grandmother. I guess she's still my great grandmother, she just isn't living any more. She died when I was an infant or toddler. But while she was alive, I'm told, she never let me cry. And she spoke only Castilian Spanish, though she understood a great deal more English than she let on. Because my Dad and Mom decided to wait to have children, Lola called my Dad "pendejo" and "mediohombre," implying that he was incapable of knocking up the Moms.

Anyway - Lola's stuffing is without question, the best stuffing in the known Universe. Here's the recipe:

½ - ¾ lb ground veal
½ - ¾ lb ground pork
1 green apple
1 or 2 chopped onion
3 stalks celery chopped
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
¼ cup parsley chopped
2 eggs
1-3 cups of croutons
½ cup raisins (soaked in hot water, drained)
½ cup of butter

Brown onions, celery, garlic, and parsley in 1 cube of butter (5 min)

Add meat, apple, croutons raisins, salt, and pepper. Cook until done.

Remove from heat. Add eggs slightly beaten. If stuffing is runny, add more croutons or breadcrumbs.

Prepare the night before and let sit in refrigerator overnight.

I know there's some vagueness in this recipe - like a 50% swing in the amount of meat. I like a little more meat and a few more raisins. But mess around a bit. Add stuff until it smells right. And this year, I could not find ground veal. Normally, I would never buy veal anyway, but it's a family tradition. But this year I could not find any at three different grocery stores. So I think I'm going to sub a bit of ground beef and a bit of ground turkey. The point is for it to have beef flavor and be a bit moist. I hope it works.

Which leads me to the "shopping, ehhh, not so much part." I did most of the shopping last week. But as we finalized our menu for the day, there were a few things to pick up. OK, more than a few things. And shopping where I live in general is among the most depressing things I ever have to do on a normal day. But it is even worse on the day before Thanksgiving.

I overheard an argument that almost turned violent over the difference between sweet potatoes and yams and which ones they should buy. And then there were strong opinions over whether to get the brand name jet puffed marshmallows or the off-brand mini-marshmallows.

Parolee in a wife beater: "You get twice as much with the mini ones."

Wife (perhaps wife, unsure about beaten, but moderately bruised): "Yeah, but we don't need twice as much unless we get more yams."

Parolee: "We're getting sweet potatoes."

There were countless inconsiderate people leaving their carts in the worst places - like right in front of the spice rack, or the middle of the aisle, or in front of the dairy door. And there was one woman whose ass, I kid you not, was wider than her cart and had three bratty kids pulling things off the shelves on both sides of the aisle. I took a detour down the panty hose ailse to get away from that scene. And I only saw one minor spanking today, so that was better than usual.

One year when I was just out of college, I saw an old man buying a Swanson turkey dinner and some wine. That made me cry in the car after I unloaded my groceries. If I ever see that again, I'm inviting the person over.

Someday I'll write about a typical trip to Wal-Mart and registering people to vote.

That's it for now. I have to go make the stuffing and bake chocolate chip pumpkin bread and clean the oven and get the rotisserie set up on the grill (I hope I have enough propane, now that I think about it) and wash the dogs and take a shower and move the tables and I think that's it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Post via Palm Pilot

This might not be exciting to anyone else, but I am thumb typing this post on my Palm Tungsten C through a wireless internet connection. Blogging from bed. Pretty geeky. I wonder if I can blog from the hammock.

Monday, November 21, 2005

So I set my priorities and then...

...a couple of phone calls and e-mails changed everything up.

So there's a good point in defense of procrastination - if you put something off long enough, you might not have to do it at all.

I'm looking at my whiteboard...

...and seeing all of the tasks to be completed this week. And realizing that I only have three days to get it all done. And since my wife is taking Wednesday off so we can prepare for Thanksgiving dinner at our place, I really only have two days. So now it's a matter of prioritizing - what REALLY needs to get done before the long weekend and what will keep until after? Right off the top I can see "Clean the office" is not going to happen. Although I might be able to get more done and done more quickly with a clean desk. Maybe I'll just shove everything in to a big box and put it outside and sort through it over the weekend with a turkey hangover.