Potpourri

I threw out the remains of Christmas dinner today (see: left), which was about half of a three and a half pound brisket.  There wouldn't have been NEAR that much left under normal circumstances but I overcooked the damned thang to the point where it was tougher than a dog's chew toy.  My dinner guest, to her everlasting credit, said "it's fine" when I complained/apologized for the quality of the meat and she even went back for seconds.  The cook really appreciates that sorta thang, yanno?  Even if we know in our heart o' hearts the girl was stretching the truth a wee bit.

So... the brisket went, after one episode of reheated leftovers and one episode of homemade Reuben sammiches, the latter which weren't TOO bad, given I shredded the slices of brisket to near baby food consistency.  The veggie remnants (the best part o' that meal) were consumed in their entirety on Boxing Day.  With great relish.

―:☺:―

I've noticed there are at least two ads currently running on the Fox News Channel for devices that prevent snoring.  What I want to know is why ALL the testimonials come from MEN.  Seriously... BOTH ads feature perky women complaining about their husbands keeping them up at night until such time as they purchased the product bein' flogged, with one particularly egregious example showing the Snoring Husband bein' banished to the couch.  I suppose wimmen don't snore in teevee land, but I'm here to tell ya that ain't true in the Real World.  I've shared a bed with a couple o' wimmen in the past that would give a Weyerhaeuser mill serious competition in the noise department... so much so that I went and slept on their couch.  Willingly.  Out o' necessity.

―:☺:―

And then there's this in the "Not Your Father's Air Force" department:

Bod Pod Battle: The 50th Space Wing at Schriever AFB, Colo., has introduced a new twist to the age-old New Year's resolution of losing weight and getting in better shape. The wing's "Bod Pod" competition will pit squadrons against each other in a battle to cut body fat. Beginning on Jan. 1, participants will have two weeks to step into the Bod Pod at the base's health and wellness center to get their body fat measured. The machine, which resembles a giant egg from the outside, uses air displacement to calculate body density and body fat. Once measured, airmen will have until late March to tone up before entering the Bod Pod once again for final measurements to determine the winners. "We really want to encourage airmen to start the New Year on the right foot by learning exactly where their body fat numbers are," said Christopher Woodruff, Schriever's HAWC health promotions educator. He added, "Body fat, when in reference to health, plays a big roll." (Schriever report by SSgt. Patrice Clarke)

Two thangs:  First and foremost, you don't need a freakin' Bod Pod (I love THAT term) to know if you're fat or if you need to get in shape; what a tremendous waste o' money that is.  Second, it's ROLE, dammit.  Don't make me come down there...

Another Update

I KNOW all y'all are just dying to know how the election turned out, right?  I mean I've been inundated with off-line communications asking just that question.  Well, sorta.  Well, not at ALL.  But that's beside the point, coz I'm gonna tell ya anyhoo.  Here it is:

With Sunday liquor sales approved by voters on Dec. 13, businesses serving alcoholic beverages are already in the process of turning in their applications for Sunday liquor licenses, according to Portales City Clerk Joan Martinez-Terry.

[...]

Cattle Baron Manager Richard Chambers said he believes Portales has more to offer people and this is one way of bringing more to the community.

He said the Sunday liquor sales will also bring more jobs to the community.

“Vines will be open on Sundays now, so that’s going to be a whole other day they weren’t open before and they are going to have to hire new people and I’ll have to hire new people as well,” Chambers said. “I think it’s great for Portales that people won’t be driving to Clovis to eat and have a glass of wine or beer. There aren’t a lot of eating options here, so it will be good for the community.”

That last bit is oh-so-true... we don't have a lot o' dining options.  One other thang you should know: the vote was 311-278 in favor of Sunday alcohol sales.  It was a near run thang, but P-Ville has been dragged... kicking and screaming... into the 21st century.  Well, sorta.  You still can't buy beer on Sundays at Wally-World or anywhere else (except at Cannon Airplane Patch), for that matter.  One small step...

Broadening Our Horizons XXXIX

The errands are done and I was most gratified to see the local likker locker expanded their selection of Abita beers to include Purple Haze and Turbodog, the latter of which comes highly recommended by Occasional Reader Anon.  Or one of the Anons, anyhoo.  So ya know what we did...

MMMmmm!  Malty!  Caramel-y!  The Bros rate this beer as "exceptional," and I wholeheartedly agree.  Good stuff, Maynard... and Turbodog will become a fixture in these parts.  It's a new fave.

Bonus:  Tonight's dessert managed to sneak into the picture.  I wonder how that happened?  Yeah, it's a bought-punkin-pie, not homemade.  Don't gimmee no grief, mmm-kay?  OTOH, you could gimmee pie.  Homemade pie.

What's For Dinner, Buck?

BLTs!  Some assembly required...

In the beginning

Building the perfect beast

Dinner is served

Yum.  Our beer was a Santa Fe Nut Brown Ale.  Or two.

Yuck

You've prolly seen the ads on yer teevee announcing with varying degrees of faux excitement that the "McRib is back!"  Well, I'd never had one before so I tried one today.  I'm of the opinion that the McRib should have stayed wherever the hell it went; it had no bid'niz comin' back.  I'm told (by reputable sources recommended by Mr. Google) that the "meat" in the McRib is genuine pork and not some sorta mystery meat but ya coulda fooled me.  The "meat" has a rubbery consistency and such a complete lack of meat flavor that it reminded me of the canned substance found in C-rations long ago and far away.  That stuff was allegedly meat, too.  

My bottom line:  I couldn't finish the McRib; one third of it went down the garbage disposal.  What's worse yet is I bought TWO of those abominable thangs; the second sandwich followed the remnants of the first into the disposal.

I agree with this guy:

McDonald's would be much wiser to serve actual smoked rib meat pulled off the bone with a better tasting and spicier BBQ sauce. Short of that, they could easily offer a REAL pulled pork sandwich made from one of the popular brands like Curly's or Lloyd's.

What he said.

So I went lookin' for a suitable image for this post and found a truckload of Mickey Dee's adverhype.  And this lil thang:

I simply can't think of ANYTHING snarky enough for a caption or comment.  All y'all gotta help me out.

Just Sayin'

At least one Gentle Reader was perplexed at my Wegman's comment on last night's post and one other Gentle Reader from Rochester got it.  For the record: buying groceries at Wegman's is an experience unto itself... a GREAT experience.  I've been around the block a few times and have lived and shopped ALL over this great country, from border to border and sea to shining sea.  There are no better food markets than Wegman's anywhere... and few equals... period, full-stop.  I'm not alone in making this statement; herewith some evidence.  First, from GMA:

Sept. 2, 2006

Shopping for groceries can be an exercise in frustration, fraught with experiences you'd rather avoid.

The ideal? Lots of checkout lanes, wide aisles, and consistently fresh meat and produce -- like at Wegmans, one of several stores which got top ratings in the October issue of Consumer Reports.

[...]

The Rankings

The top ranked stores were Wegmans and Trader Joe's. Top regional chains were Wegmans in the Northeast; Publix and Harris Teeter in the South; Raley's in California; and Hy-Vee in the Midwest.

"All of these stores, especially the regional ones, did well because of their selection and their produce and their convenience," Kleman said.

From a 2010 readers' survey in Daily Finance:

TOP 5 FAVORITE GROCERY STORES

No. 1: Wegmans

Headquartered in Rochester, New York, Wegmans was founded in 1916 by the Wegman family. Wegmans operates 75 stores: 48 in New York State, 13 in Pennsylvania, 7 in New Jersey, 6 in Virginia and 1 in Maryland.


Sample Reader Comments:

sweet sue 14218 says:
"Wegmans is absolutely the best food store I have ever shopped in. [It has] lowest prices, friendly and helpful staff and the store is always spotless. Another good thing is they have plenty of cart corrals to put your empty cart in to keep them from hitting anyone [else's] car."

Neesko says:
"One of the highlights of visiting my son and family in Rochester, N.Y. is going to Wegmans. [On my] last visit, I [took] the tour of the [flagship] store. Wegmans, please come to Virginia -- especially Virginia Beach!" 

Another thumbnail sketch (there's a slideshow of great markets at this link):

Wegmans, which originated in Rochester, NY, is a gastronome's Mecca. This supermarket of all supermarkets offers more than 70,000 products from the every corner of the world. From basics to the authentic sweets developed by one of France's top pastry chefs, Pierre Hermé. The fresh fruits and vegetables max out at over 700 varieties and are picked daily (sometimes twice) and delivered directly to the store.

Not to be missed: The bulk food section. Barrels of everything from candy to nuts to baking flour and can be purchased in various quantities.

More here, and at The Wiki.  Weggies really IS all that and a bag o' chips; my local Wegman's even had a sushi bar and the fish was EXCELLENT.  As Small-Tee said in comments below: "If you never been to one, you'll never understand."

Dinner

Sometimes we be lazy... and it's good to be able to go down the block to the local grocery store and pick up dinner and dessert in a bag.  Like this:

OK, so it ain't Weggies.  But then... what IS?

Dinner...

... was all that but no bag o' chips.  We didn't need a bag o' chips when we had this:

Out of the broiler

Dinner is served!

We got off to a rocky start this evening when we discovered our range isn't furnished with a broiler pan, the first such ever in my experience.  But that's OK, for we happened to know where a broiler pan was lurking, so we hastened over to ECMdP and retrieved it; crisis averted.  Everything after that was pretty much bid'niz as usual, and everything came together more or less on time and in the sequence desired.

We fixed enough for me and everyone who threatened in comments yesterday to drop by for dinner this evening.  But that's the normal state of affairs when you're cooking for one.  That's a Good Thing, though... tomorrow's dinner is just a matter of re-heating tonight's leftovers.  And we have a LOT of those.

Oh, yeah:  it was fucking GREAT!  And now it's time for After Dinner Whiskey Hour and some vintage Bowie.

The Day, So Far

We accomplished today what we meant to do yesterday, which is to say we cruised over to The Big(ger) City™ where we got The Green Hornet a bath, then rode on over to Cannon Airplane Patch where we picked up this month's meds, hit the Class VI Store for the customary and reasonable beer re-stockage, and topped it all off with a major commissary run.  We were back home around noonish, put the groceries away (how pleasant that was, and I kid thee NOT: storage, and lots of it!), retrieved a shipment of cigars from the mailbox and promptly adjourned to the verandah for to partake of a Partagas Black and a 1554.  Rewards, yanno?

So... that's done and we're in the midst of preparing tomorrow's dinner today.  We'll feast on the Pennington variation of a London Broil tomorrow evening after letting the flank steak marinate over night.  Here's what the main course looks like before going into the marinade:

Note the 1.65 pound flank steak is lightly scored on both sides and will soon be immersed in marinade, consisting primarily of three-fourths of a bottle o' red New Mexico table wine, about a quarter cup o' Spanish olive oil, three cloves o' crushed garlic, a sprinkling of parsley, basil, thyme, pepper, and a couple o' bay leaves.  If this were Former Happy Days we'd be using fresh herbs from our herb garden but it ain't, so we won't.

We may or may not post pictures of the finished product tomorrow but rest assured it WILL be delicious.

Now we have to figger out what's dinner this evening and prepare for more hockey goodness later on.  Tonight it's the Wings against the Canucks, at The Joe.  It would be good if the Beloved Wings remain perfect on this young season, but Vancouver is coming off of a tough loss to the Flyers last evening and will be motivated.  We shall see...

Tonight's ADWH Soundtrack... and Other Stuff

Crosby, Stills, and Nash:

Holding you close undisturbed before a fire
The pressure in my chest when you breathe in my ear
We both knew this would happen when you first appeared
My lady of the island

The tune is a long-time favorite and carries many, many memories... happy and otherwise... from Former Happy Days, but those memories are mostly happy. Mostly.

―:☺:―

Today was a typical Fall Saturday which is to say it's been mostly all football, all the time.  We watched ND pull one out on the road and go to 2-2 on the season.  That game was a near-run thang and it's gonna be a rare win for the Irish this season, methinks.  We then watched Moogie's Hogs lose to Alabama... and they were never really in that game.  I had flashes of hope but Bama was just too, too strong.  And now we're watching a contest featuring another team from the Supremely Egotistical Conference, which is to say LSU-West Virginia.  There were times during this game when I thought about turning it off, simply coz it looked like the Mountaineers were outclassed.  But those West Virginian guys refuse to give up and the game is still in doubt as I type (with 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter).  So I'll stay tuned to the game as I construct this post...

We took care of other bid'niz before we settled in to an afternoon of football indolence, which is to say we went out to Cannon Airplane Patch earlier in the day to re-stock the likker-locker and do a commissary run.  About the commissary: shopping takes on a whole nuther meaning when you know you (a) have a big-ass fridge and freezer and (b) have about six times the cabinet space you used to have when you were mobile.  So... we now have three different varieties of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer and about as many different cuts of meat.  And we won't go into what's in the crisper nor on the shelves of the fridge. Suffice to say we are well-stocked and we are MOST happy about that.

―:☺:―

We mentioned in passing that we would begin to actually cook again, once thangs got back to normal.  Well, we're not near normal as yet but we HAVE begun cooking.  We broke the seal on the oven this afternoon, constructing one of our favorite dishes... Viva La Chicken, about which there are several recipes extant on these here inter-tubes, this bein' just one.  I vary considerably from that recipe, using about two dozen tortillas, one whole HELLUVA lot o' green chiles, two cans o' mushroom soup, and about two pounds of shredded jack cheese in my variation.  Let's illustrate:

Note the big-ass pile of boned and shredded chicken at left and the big tub of Bueno brand green chiles.

The casserole just before goin' to the oven.  I ran out of Bueno chiles and had to substitute Ortega brand chiles to top off the casserole.  Note the left over tortillas on the cutting board. 

You can't imagine how GOOD the premises smelled after I (a) boiled the chicken (with lotsa spices... primarily bay leaf, oregano, thyme, and basil, along with half an onion and three cloves of crushed garlic) and (b) took the casserole out of the oven. 

And so dinner was served.

The next culinary project will be a London Broil, assuming I can find a good flank steak.  In the meantime this casserole will feed me for about the next three days.  Anything worth doin' is worth OVER-doin', no?

What's a Body To Do?

Our weather just went all to hell overnight, as far as the temperature and our normally brilliant blue skies go.  It's pretty chilly out (about 55 degrees or so as we type, with 100% relative humidity) so that precludes any sort o' outdoor activity for YrHmblScrb, seein' as how we are soft in our old age.  Yeah, I COULD put on a sweatshirt, dump the collected rain water out o' the camp chairs (we did get some a lot o' rain, which is a great good thang), and sit outdoors for Happy Hour... but the only thing I would get out of THAT would be a wet ass and a bad disposition.

So we had a better ideer.  We mashed up four avocados that hit their ripeness peak just today, sliced and diced half a sweet onion (and that dicing was finer than frog-hair), squeezed half a lime's worth o' juice into the mix, and finished it off by adding two tablespoons of El Pinto Green Chile Sauce, after which we mashed some more.  The result went into the fridge so the various ingredients could become acquainted with each other.  That was two hours ago, this is now:

Some Happy Hours are better than others, Gentle Reader...  this one's pretty good.

Miscellanea

We're right in the middle o' Happy Hour and took a break to come inside and put up yet another post, this time to celebrate the third consecutive day o' NO AC here at El Casa Móvil de Pennington , mainly coz there's no need for artificial cooling.  Witness:

We have all our windows and door (one each) open to capture as many of the soft breezes as we can, for it is GORGEOUS.

―:☺:―

And then there's this: Incentive...

I only wish ABQ wasn't a four-hour drive from ECMdP coz this is powerful incentive to make the trip.  And then there's this from the link in the screen cap above:

Red Chile Fields: Secrets for growing the best chile from Salsa Twins on Vimeo.

"Holy Cow!" sez the guy in the video and I agree... them's a LOT o' chiles!  Tasty, too.  You can order New Mexico's best chile here; but lucky me:  I can buy it at Wally-World here in P-Ville.

―:☺:―

About tonite's "Big Event"...

The great danger facing Mr. Obama tonight is that the public simply tunes him out, viewing his pronouncements as either irrelevant or annoying. 

It's been a dramatic fall for a man who was, his supporters assured us in 2008, America's best orator since Abraham Lincoln. Now he's reduced to a warm-up act for a football game.

That would be Karl Rove, writing in today's WSJ.  Mr. Rove is correct, at least as far as YrHmblScrb is concerned: I tuned the president out quite some time ago.  No surprise, eh?

Does My Diet Make Me Look Fat?

I got to thinkin' that Michelle O would NOT be pleased at the way I eat.  Sometimes.  We all do this sorta thang occasionally and I know nary a soul who hasn't eaten a whole bag o' Oreos (or the equivalent amount o' junk food o' choice) and called it dinner at one point or another.  But consider my entire caloric intake from yesterday, in rough chronological order:

• Eight cups o' strong espresso-grind coffee, lightened with moderate amounts o' half-and-half and sweetened with raw cane sugar. Oh, and one level teaspoon o' Ovaltine, per cup.


• A complete bag o' home made tortilla chips from Juanito's restaurant, accompanied by a quarter jar o' El Pinto Green Chile Sauce (consumed in concert with the following)


• Three beers (Sammy Adams Octoberfest x2, Newcastle Nut Brown Ale)


• Four Nabsico Pinwheel cookies


• Two large glasses o' whole milk (we do NOT do 2% or any other sort o' perverted and unnatural food acts here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington... in the truest sense, meaning we also reject anything/everything labeled "organic" or "light")


• Four fingers o' Cragganmore (well, mebbe just slightly more)


• One tin o' Crown Prince Kipper Snacks


• A half pint o' Häagen-Dazs butter pecan ice cream


• One Centrum Silver vitamin pill 

I don't worry about the calories... I get plenty o' those in one form or another... but there are times when I just don't want to cook, even to the point of nuking sumthin' out o' the freezer. So, we just graze when terminal laziness hits.  Am I wrong in this?  Or is Michelle O just an overbearing, dominating, more-than-slightly-addled, busybody?  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack and... Dinner

It was a Grateful Dead kinda afternoon...

Gone are the days when the ox fall down,
Take up the yoke and plow the fields around.
Gone are the days when the ladies said' "Please,
Gentle Jack Jones won't you come home to me."

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine,
The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean.
Sound of the thunder with the rain pourin' down,
And it looks like the old man's gettin' on.

Ring a bell?  It does around here...

So we did Happy Hour and then adjourned to the great indoors to fix dinner.  A couple o' few days ago I went on about how I like those bag-dinners and we fixed one this evening.  Ever wonder how one cooks in an RV?  Wonder no more...

First we made some necessary adjustments so we could actually cook.  This is what the stove looks like when we're not cooking...

The first step is relocate the cigar stash and other crap to the bathroom, like so:

One gets double-duty from a lot o' things in an RV; this is auxiliary and temporary storage.  So then we began to throw dinner together.

Heating up the frying pan.  The instructions say to use a non-stick frying pan but a light coat of olive oil in a standard skillet does the trick, too.

Meanwhile, we were defrosting a handful of shrimp to augment the six teeny-tiny shrimp included in the bag.

In progress.

And then dinner is served:  Bertolli's Shrimp, Asparagus, and Penne in a bag; two slices o' bread; and a bowl of red grapefruit... all washed down with a vintage Dr. Pepper.  This will be followed by After Dinner Whiskey Hour, after I'm done watching this really cool CNBC teevee show on BMWs.

News of the Poor and Obscure

As opposed to the rich and famous, of course.  We're in from running the day's errands which consisted mostly of re-stocking our food supply.  Let me say this about that:

I LURVE these bagged meals.  I like the nukable steam bags even better, but Wally-World doesn't carry them.  If I had driven the extra 22 miles out to the Cannon Airplane Patch commissary I could have picked up some steamers, but we opted for convenience over selection.  And besides that, we're not in need of more scotch at the moment.  I'll drive those extra miles to save ten Yankee Dollars on a bottle o' scotch but I won't drive 'em for a wider selection in food.  Priorities, yanno?

That said... isn't it weird how a lot of food comes in bags these days?  I buy that bagged salad, too.  These Modern Times surely are a boon to bachelors... I remember the days of my first encounter with the single life all TOO damned well, the days when I subsisted mainly on Campbell's soup, PBJs, and Kraft macaroni & cheese.  Well that and the USAF dining hall, which option isn't available to me any longer and more's the pity.  Anyhoo... now it's reasonably easy to eat well (sorta) while not spending hours in the kitchen.  Shorter: cooking for one sucks.

Speakin' o' scotch... and we did, above...I succumbed.  That Johnnie Walker Gold now occupies a niche in my freezer door, as opposed to me freezing four fingers of the stuff at a time, which means my refills are just as chilled as the original pour.  I highly recommend this practice if you haven't tried the frozen booze trick.  I'm not sure if it works on run o' the mill booze but it sure makes this Gold stuff taste wonderful.  

The eagle-eyed among you will notice an object floating in the bottle and that's the remnants of a piss-poor cork.  The whiskey is excellent, the cork not so much.  It's a good thing I still had that bottle of Glenmorangie hangin' around when I broke the Gold's cork, coz that Glenmorangie cork fit the Gold bottle perfectly.  Sometimes ya live right... or get lucky.

―:☺:―

Random notes... I finally got off the dime and paid the bills today.  The holiday kinda-sorta screwed me up as the USPS wasn't on the job Monday.  I'm almost never this late in getting the checks in the mail, but I'm not late-late.  Nothing's due until the 15th.

Speaking of mail... various and sundry organizations keep sending me return address labels (I'm pretty sure I have a lifetime supply now) which I cheerfully use, albeit with a twinge of guilt. That's because these people always ask for a small donation and I always decline but I continue to use their labels.  What a miserable freeloader I am, eh?

I coulda swore I had sumthin' else, but it escapes me now.  You're welcome.