So for Easter, I made a nasty good bucket of some of the best mashed potatoes that I have made in quite some time and there were plenty of leftovers. Rather than just eat “plain” mashed potatoes, I thought I would try frying them up. This batch of spuds was already great, but frying them should turn it up to “eleven!”
I suppose I could have just plopped a pile of the potatoes right into the skillet, but I wanted to do this with them:
I’m using two cutting boards as rails so I can roll out the potatoes to an even thickness.
Using the biscuit cutter for the pucks
The ultimate edible playdoh !
I don’t like to fry in the house, so outside on the side burner of the grill while I cook some burgers.
I didn’t use my stash of bacon grease. Quite literally I have not added to the stash or used the stash in about a year. It sits in a jar in the very back of the fridge, completely hidden. I opened the jar and it did not smell rancid, but I wasn’t really sure what the time limit was of grease going bad, so I didn’t use it. Instead I used some Ghee that I had. Potatoes fried in butter, that’s almost as good as frying in bacon grease.
We often watch “Cook’s Country” on television. Their forte is taking well known or classic recipes and try to make them better. One episode they wanted to recreate the classic greasy spoon, roadside restaurant fried burger that was popular in the late 50’s and early 60’s with people taking long car trips. The interesting part of the recipe was that they ground their own beef with a food processor and it was something we wanted to try. Now, my wife had tried it a couple of times and it wasn’t really that good. The biggest problem was she was using “petite sirloin”. WAY TOO LEAN and there is too much gristle and other connective tissue left on that cut and the meat was still to chunky. So, I wanted to try it again, this time using a piece of boneless chuck.
Starting with a nice piece of boneless chuck.
Cut them into about 1 inch cubes
The cubes go into the freezer for about 10 minutes just to give the chunks a slight firmness. Other wise, when they get run through the food processor, they might just turn to mush.
I ran the meat through the processor twice. I first used the slicing attachment.
Then the meat meets the real chopper blade.
I did a couple of batches.
By golly !! Dang if that at least doesn’t look like ground beef!!
Nothing like nice bright pink beef !!
Now, because the meat is actually small bits and pieces and not long fibers like real ground meat, there is a lot less cohesion and because I do not pack my burgers very tight, these would probably not do well out on the grill. I only want to have to touch these once when I flip them so the don’t fall apart. Do you see the dimple in the middle of each burger? That’s so when they cook, they don’t expand up and end up like meatballs.
Some tater tots done on the waffle iron. Mmmmmm, crispy !
There are a whole bunch of websites/blogs that show what can and cannot be cooked on a waffle iron and tater tots was a good one.
Lightly toasted bun with a little lettuce and some thousand island style condiment. Another burger tip, toasted buns provide a little buffer so the juices of the burger don’t make the bun soggy as fast.
Despite all of the food nazi warnings about under cooked ground beef, I still LOVE my burgers PINK. An interesting thing about grinding the meat this way is that because the bits and pieces are small, I think the burger can be cooked a little more closer to medium and it would still be good because there is not a lot of bite resistance. It doesn’t fall apart like a sloppy joe but it has a good chew.
“Fake U.S. marshal convicted after pulling gun in Chicago theater”
“A Will County man who drew his concealed handgun and announced he was a deputy U.S. marshal after an annoyed Chicago movie audience told him to stop talking on his phone was convicted Wednesday of impersonating a federal agent.”
“Concealed.”
I will stipulate that in this case, the weapon was “concealed.” But since words have meaning, why was the word “concealed” used instead of perhaps, “hidden”, “unseen” or even “the handgun that he was illegally carrying.”
I will admit that when I first read the print article, I thought right away that this was a case of an person in Illinois that had a CCL and did something incredibly stupid. (Those are the kind of CCL carriers that should have NEVER got it.)
Try as I might, I was unable to find any mention of the suspect having a CCl in Illinois. I did find a person with the same name in Illinois that lost his credentials for TRAINING CCL’s.
Highly trained and professional journalists go to school to learn how to write news. Surely they must be educated in proper word usage.
Was “concealed” deliberately used to conflate shootings with people that lawfully carry?
Was it ignorance??? Is it possible there are professional journalists that presume that anyone that has a gun on them can carry? Two people collaborated on this news story and I can only presume it went past at least one proofreader and hopefully an editor?? How would it be possible that all those would think that “concealed” was the correct word.
This was another unusual year in that I again took two consecutive weeks of vacation. And thank God that I did !!! We were in the middle of a project at work that without a doubt was/is/will be the worst assignment I have ever had with this company. The timing of my vacation ensured that I would not be involved in the last two weeks of the project.
The first week of vacation we would be at home and so I took a lot of frozen meat out of the freezer to cook during the week and use that as an opportunity to clean out the freezer a bit.
Mmmmmm, frozen meat.
Now the bad part is that my brother had a graduation party for his son and daughter and there was a bit of leftover, uncooked hamburger that was sent home with me. So along with the above frozen meat, I now had an extra 12 hamburgers to cook and eat for the week. And to compound the overmeatage situation, my daughter ended up being gone with a cousin for four days of that week. But I did manage !!
The previous year when we went to New Bern, NC, we (I mean me) drove straight through. That was way too much driving and this time I bit the bullet and stayed at a hotel coming and going. I don’t like adding an extra $200 and two days to the trip but had to do it.
We stayed at a nice place in New Bern and the town itself was great for food and walking around in, but it was an hour each way everyday to get to the beach. Not a big deal but it did put limits on being able to be more spontaneous and such. So I decided that regardless of what the extra cost would be, we were going to stay on the island and be closer to the beach. It didn’t take long to figure out that there were some nice places to stay, but most were designed for large family’s or groups. When dividing the cost per family, it’s very reasonable (even for a cheap bastard like myself.) Soooooooooooooooooo I had the idea to suggest to the wife that we have her brother’s family in DC and her parents meet use on the island for a family vacation.
I knew well ahead of time that there could be a great downside to that idea.
We ended up with:
Mother in law
Father in law
brother in law
sister in law
nephew
Aunt
Along with the three of this us.
It wasn’t without difficulties, but it wasn’t too bad !!
I hundreds of pictures of our beach trips but most of them are about the same so I’ll just post a few:
Food:
On vacations, I usually don’t eat more than one meal a day. This year because we were with the rest of the family, we mostly bought groceries and made dinners at our beach house. But we did eat out a couple of times when we were far from the beach house our just to dang tired to cook.
It was around 2 pm one afternoon and we were coming back from somewhere we decided to get a sandwich at Bros which was about a mile away from where the beach house was.
Those were both $10 sandwiches. The service was very slow and the sandwiches were “meh.” Doubt I would recommend it or go there again.
On the trip last year and this year, once we got to the West Virginia area, I saw a lot of billboards for “Bojangles.” We didn’t stop last year but did this year on our return trip going through Princeton, WV.
I got the “Roasted Chicken Bites.” Dang, they were OK but for some reason I thought they were going to be BBQ. But, the biscuit????? FANTASTIC !!!! I could have an entire meal of just the biscuits.
The wife and daughter both got the chicken tenders. There are very few times when eating at a fast food chain that you can actually say “WOW!!” when you eat something. But by an agreement with all of us, these were literally the best chicken tenders we had ever eaten.
Activities:
Of course finding sea glass was on the agenda at all times. More was found this year than last year but there still was not a lot found. This was the best piece found:
The Sister-in-Law found a DNR program that let people seine in the Pamlico Sound and they explained what we caught.
Pamlico Sound is very warm and shallow. There’s a good chance that you could walk from Hatteras to the mainland. It’s a great place for spawning water life.
Here the wife and daughter are seining critters.
The marine biologist student explains what was caught. She looked at me funny when I asked if there was any drawn butter.
My daughter and her cousin out trying to catch more.
Things we brought home:
What’s a family vacation if you don’t bring home some crap??!!??
Actually we didn’t bring much home with us.
The Hatteras Island chain has more tourist trap stores full of chintzy spoo than anywhere else except the Wisconsin Dells !
Some bacon related Examples:
Does everyone have a crazy cat lady in their life?
A couple of great six packs. These were each $10.99. On the high end but really good beer.
One of the best souvenir places we stopped at was “Scotch Bonnet.”
They had some really good Taffy.
Also while in Princeton, WV where we stopped at Bojangles for lunch, we went to “Jerky Outlet”. The bacon jerky was good. The crickets really didn’t have any taste other than “crunchy.” My daughter ate two of them.
Had the occasion to take the wife out for her 50th birthday and we went to a “new” restaurant in our area. I say new because we haven’t been there. I think the place has been open for a couple of years.
I of course started my dinner off with a beer flight. 4 different 4oz beers for $10. Surprisingly the Black IPA was my favorite.
The wife ordered Poutine for an appetizer. Everything with a fried egg on it is good.
One of the drinks of the night was the Mojito. The wife got one and instead of rum, it was made with whiskey
Several good items on the menu that I wanted to try but I went with the “Sticky Chicken.” Fried thighs with a whiskey based glaze. This was really,really good !!!
The wife ordered the “Pork Belly Korean Fried Rice.” Again, with a fried egg on it, how could it not be good??
I now have 4 15 round magazines which is both good and bad.
Good that I can shoot more before having to reload, bad that I can shoot more before having to reload. Range time here is $20 an hour but if you buy $20 of ammo, you can shoot until you fall asleep. I brought 400 rounds from home and bought another 525 to get the unlimited time. I spent about 90 minutes there and if I had not had to leave for dinner, I might have stayed longer. As it was, I went through just the 400 rounds I brought with me but could have easily gone through much more.
Pretty nice range and setup.
I shoot mostly at 20-25 feet.
The person to my right was shooting a pretty sweet 357 with a 7-8″ barrel. (He was about average)
Good, but not great. That’s why it’s called practice.
And dinner, a nice bacon Cheeseburger at Red Robin.
There is currently a lot of teeth gnashing, high pitched wailing and panty bunching going on from liberals about the possibility of Obamacare being repealed. Personally, I highly doubt the GOPe will actually do it.
But most of the complaints from the above panty bunching wailers are that they claim the Republicans don’t have a plan to replace Obamacare.
To that, I say, “GREAT!!”
99% of American citizens neither want nor need Obamacare. For the 1% that does, Medicare/Medicaid can be expanded to include them at a much lower cost and burden to the other 99%.
Any Republican that supports repealing Obamacare should use this food analogy:
Obamacare is a shit sandwich that was delivered to your dining table without being ordered. Only a few desperate people would eat a shit sandwich.
You didn’t order the shit sandwich
You don’t want to eat the shit sandwich
Why would you send the shit sandwich back to the kitchen and have them send another shit sandwich out?
