Gobble, Gobble

This past weekend Sarah and I had a bunch of people over to our house for a "Thanksgiving Preview" party. In a couple of weeks we're going to have both sets of inlaws at our house for Thanksgiving, and, because of my love of all things cooked over an open flame, I said I wanted to cook the turkey on the grill. I cook lots of things on the grill, and figured that a turkey wouldn't be all that different from a pork shoulder. They're roughly the same size, and, if anything, the pork shoulder would be harder to cook because it's denser. Anyway, Sarah said okay one condition--a smart condition, I might add: that we cook a turkey before "the day" so if I royally screwed it up, it wouldn't be on Thanksgiving and thereby ruining her favorite holiday--a situation that would undoubtedly involve much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Well, I cooked the turkey on the grill and have some news to report.














Score.

I cooked the hell out of that turkey. It's safe to say that Mr. Floppy-Neck had no idea what happened to him once I got ahold of him, but ne'er has a turkey been so divine (if I do say so myself). I brined that sombeech for 18 hours in a mixture of water, salt, brown sugar, apple juice, peppercorn, allspice, and clove, and then cooked him for somewhere on the order of 3 1/2 hours, to an internal temperature of 175. At some point I tented him in foil because he was all golden-brown and I didn't want his tasty self to burn. I let it rest for 39 minutes before disassembling him into tasty goodness, and let the Americocentric feast begin.

Ahh, America, and your infatuation with unnaturally big breasts. The turkey, you heathens. Go read some Kingsolver. Geez.

Done, pt. 1

I missed last Monday night's forced blog post. I'm sure all of you people who read this blog (all none of you) missed it. Well, here's one to make you happy.

I finished my dissertation. It's done (except for 2 small things I have to add to the works cited page, which I'll do in the morning). I'm turning it in to my committee tomorrow, and will defend it on December 10. Now I'm going to cook French food.

I like to cook (as opposed to my wife, who loves to bake). Maybe I'll post stuff about cooking like she does about baking. Maybe I'll even put some pictures in. The writing won't be as good as hers is, but maybe it'll be interesting. There will probably be more cussing. And more references to post-punk and gothic Americana. Maybe I'll do it. Maybe I won't. I'm so punk.

The first thing I'm going to do is make some good veal stock and demiglase (if I can find veal bones in Oxford. I'm not optimistic. Rhea's Market might be able to get them.) But then I'm going to grill a turkey this weekend, so maybe I'll do that.

The thing is, I write all day (or at least all morning--like 4 hours) so I don't want to write on a blog at night. It's not relaxing. I want to read. I want to cook (but we don't have money or ingredients enough to do what I want). I want to play awesome-looking Playstation 3 games (again with the money thing). I'll do the first two. At least until I can figure out some way to buy myself a video game console. I need to hurry with that one because I'm rapidly leaving the prime video game demographic. I've only got a few years left. Getting old blows.

Well, well, well

It's Monday night, and that means I'm sitting here watching football, playing poker, and posting to my blog. But I'm tired, so I'm not going to say much. I type for a living, I don't want to type now.

Maybe I'll do more tomorrow to make up.

Joke

So I heard a new one tonight.

What's red and smells like blue paint?

Red paint.


You can laugh now.

Monday Night Sports

So here's my Monday Night Football post (last week my "I'm making myself post something" post was during Monday Night Football). The problem is that football is over, so this is a Monday Night National League Championship Series post. It would be a Monday Night Football post, but I played CentPoker all through football.

CentPoker is awesome (I'm not going to tell you about it, go see for yourself you lazy bastard), but there's starting to be too many people on it. For a while people played like they wanted to play. Now people just do stuipd stuff and it's not as fun anymore. Only it is. It's crazy fun. Which is why I played all through football.

It's fun to write like this where it doesn't matter becuase all the writing I do now is revising, which is not as much fun becuase you only write a few words or sentences or MAYBE a paragraph at a time. It's mainly moving around and cleaning up, so your fingers don't get to move quickly across the keyboard for very long, which is the fun part about writing on a computer.

I like writing in pen, but after a while my finger starts to hurt. I miss those little rubber things you could put on your pencil (that sentence sounds dirty). I also miss the brown erasers. They were fun to tear up

Truthiness

This is where I rant about something that doesn't matter at all.

I hate that prices don't include tax and companies that advertise their pre-tax price like that's what you actually pay. Currently this ire is aimed at Taco Bell. Taco Bell currently has a commercial campaign for an 89 cent chicken soft taco or burrito. In the commercial, a guy walks around town taking pennies from various "give a penny, take a penny" jars (communism at its finest!). He goes into Taco Bell and orders one of these new 89 cent burritos and gives the woman 88 cents. She says, "Hey, this is only 88 cents!" To which the guy responds by grabbing a penny from the Taco Bell take-a-penny jar (which does not exist in any Taco Bell I've been in) and gives it to her with a very smug "eighty-nine" and walks out with his burrito.

I call bullshit.

In the real world, that burrito does NOT cost 89 cents--it's probably more on the order of a dollar. If I walk into a Taco Bell and order one of these cheap-ass burritos and give the cashier 89 cents before trying to walk out with my burrito (especially if I give them 89 pennies) some high schooler who is pissed off that he's working in Taco Bell is going to jump over the counter and beat me to a cheesy-chewy-crunch pulp. Just figure tax into the damn price.

And for all you places that don't have sales tax on food, suck it. You'll just have to pay 7 cents more per dollar than you used to. Get over it.

I'm better. Just don't get me started on gas prices. $3.749 a gallon is $3.75! It's not $3.74! Why are we so dumb that we think a tenth of a penny means something? It doesn't. Idiots. Gah!

Forced post

So I haven't posted anything in a long time, and I haven't been very good about keeping a regular posting schedule, so I've probably lost whatever regular readers I had. If I had any. So here's a post saying sorry. Sorry.

It's hard for me to write these things because I get ideas in the middle of the day, but I'm working in the middle of the day and I don't want to take the time to do this. But then when I get home and have a chance to post a blog, I don't want to or I can't remember what I wanted to write about. Maybe I'm not dedicated enough, but I think I'd rather be dedicated to getting a job, which I'm trying to be.

So maybe I'll start jotting down ideas. But I won't.

Such is the life of an itinerant blogger. I just wanted to say that word.

So here's what I'll do. When I can't think of a post or don't want to put one up, I'll just post a dumb joke. This is one of my favorites.

What kind of coffee did they serve on the Titanic?

Sanka.

I laughed my ass off the first time I heard that. What's that say about me?