Cooking tips and other lost art forms

Ramblings Post #100
Sporty is in the home stretch, and in less than two weeks her project will officially be off the ground and running. Until then she's needing to stretch a few bucks, and since the woman don't cook, I put together a few tips to help her out. She's quick study. She'll get it.

You aren't really struggling if you don't have a five pound bag of potatoes in your house and have started to dread the smell of french fries. I've made ramen noodles every way they can be made, and probably a few ways they shouldn't have, learned the value of buying seasonings when times are good, and only just got out of the habit of buying groceries on payday when I realized I was never going to eat all the food already in my freezer. Ever.

So you need to stretch a few bucks to cover a few meals? Well, let's look at chicken....a meal for the ages.

You will need:
One pack of chicken (three breasts) - about $9
One packet of store brand gravy - about $1
Whatever seasonings you already own - about free

Heat your oven to about 400 degrees. Clean the chicken and season with whatever you have - a little salt, some pepper, garlic if you have it, I think everyone in America is legally required to have one can of "old bay" - which you can sprinkle on, just use whatever you got. I once seasoned a chicken with orange juice, okay?. Put the chicken in a baking dish, and put a little water on the bottom. Put in oven.

Tenderize how you choose. Just sayin'

Wait about 30 minutes or so.

Mix up your packet of store brand gravy and water, and heat it up in a small pan. It should get thicker in about a minute or two. When you pull the chicken out, cut it up into smaller portions, then pour this gravy over the chicken. Most people are surprised, but chicken by itself tastes less like chicken than say, something that's supposed to taste like chicken. This gravy is for flavor. Yes, you are putting chicken flavoring on chicken, to make it taste more like chicken. Don't think about it. Put the chicken back in the oven and let it cook for another 5 or 10 minutes, cooking in the gravy. Pull it out, salt and pepper to taste. Put it in the fridge to keep, you got about three or four days.

Now. What is that good for?

With some boil in a bag rice ($2) you got chicken and rice. With some bread ($2), you got chicken sandwiches. With some vegetables you got chicken and veggies. Chicken and stove top stuffing ($2). Chicken and um, did I say rice? If you don't mix the chicken, but only add it as you make the meal, it maintains it's versatility. I have a friend, if you got to his house to eat with the family and you have a choice of the chicken, the chicken, or if he's feeling the culinary adventure, the chicken! Those kid's taste buds are going to explode when they finally get their first piece of bacon. Maybe some fish, but mostly chicken, so repetition can be okay if you're willing to use a little imagination. Wing sauce?

But I digress. So for about $15, you got eats for three or four days, with variety.

This works with pork too, but I wouldn't suggest the chicken gravy. Believe it or not, pork actually tastes like pork.

Try a pork tenderloin ($9) on or about 400 degrees for about 25 minutes in a shallow pan, then take it out and cut it into slices about finger width. Then lay out the slices and put it back in the oven for another 5 or 10 minutes. Sometimes I'll add barbecue sauce on half or some other sauce, and with a knife and some veggies ($1) and oil (jeez, you got oil) you can make a little stir-fry, some boil in a bag rice or again the with bread you already paid for, sandwiches.

So for less than $30 you got a weeks worth of eats, you just gotta get used to leftovers. And if it starts getting old, you hit a dollar menu somewhere.
But wait! There's more!

5 fairly large potatoes - about $5
1 roll of store brand foil - about $1
1 tub of butter - about $1
1 packet of cheese (optional) - about $3
1 thing of bacon bits - about $3

And just like that, loaded baked potatoes! Use the fork to poke holes in the potato before cooking, slather up the potato with a little oil water and salt, and pop them in the oven on - you guessed it - about 400 degrees for about an hour.

> or as my Mom discovered, wrapped in a few layers of cling wrap ($2) stick them in the microwave for 7 minutes.

Looks good, don't it?

Then remove, add the butter, the cheese and a splash of bacon bits and salt, and whammo...loaded baked potato! As a straight back up, and it will cover 5 good meals.

So, let's see...You got chicken, pork and baked potatoes, almost 13 or 14 meals...and you ain't even spent $40. Okay my math might be off a bit, but you see what I'm saying.

A Quack who's gone to the Dogs!

Ramblings Post #54
There are a number of things that make me wonder if the grand creator really knows what he's doing or maybe, just maybe, he's just occasionally rolling the dice and seeing what happens just to spice things up.

A few weeks ago, Chatty Mogul took a dog on option. That's how he described it. One of our coworkers with small children chose his kids over the dog (fie upon you PETA) and found the dog a new home with Chatty. They had an agreement that he would keep the dog for a month or so and if he didn't like it the family would take it back, and probably take him to the pound.

I feel so sorry for that dog. Damned either way.

So for the past few weeks, mixed in with stock tips, stories of how he built a purse sized ice maker for his stepmother, learning options trading, and the occasional foray into his actual job, he's been having dog conversations with other dog owners, eliciting dog advice, looking up dog information but mostly Chatty has been telling dog stories. Ad nasuem.

The dog eats dry food. The dog makes him seem less creepy to the neighbors The dog needs exercise. The dog's training went well. The dog's training failed. The dog eats canned food. He needs a fence because of the dog The dog almost bit him. The dog is very intelligent. The dog doesn't trust him. Etc, etc so on....

We don't call him the Chatty Mogul for nothing. Once when he made a startled outburst I mistakenly asked "what's wrong?" only to be shot derisive looks by co-workers and I'm fairly certain one of the girls popped a garrote she keeps handy just in case Chatty just won't shut up. She didn't look to happy I'd asked that either. Luckily, he didn't hear me. I'd momentarily forgotten you don't ask him questions if you could help it. Brain lock.

I'd describe Chatty as our office's version of Cheer's Cliff Clavin, but only without the charm or good looks.

The rest of Moguls are just moguling. Naive mogul still seems to believe he can beat the market, crying in the past few days about a 40% loss on his investment that went back up as soon as he got out of it, and yet in the next breath extolling the virtues of his "system" based on moving averages and USA today news updates or his new ventures into stock options. Daddy Mogul is on diet, with a trainer. For a while I thought he and Chatty Mogul would end up the same size, but I think he finally realized that he doesn't want to end up like his partner in crime. I've often thought of him as the medium between Chatty and Naive, as the young one is Abercrombie & Fitch slim. For the sake of his kid I hope he makes it down a healthier size.

Now, in my minor experience in school and watching my brother do it a few years ago (day trading), people who make money investing tend to watch their stocks like hawks. The office moguls use the stock tracker apps on their iPhones when they can take a few minutes, but for the most part make even casual investors look like scholars. This does not stop their conversations regarding their prowess.

There are days when it's like a comedy show. I won't even discuss how Naive Mogul rambled through his bastardized version of GI Joe, trampling my childhood memories and sounding like a guy who better pray he stays slim and A & F pretty all his life.

Barkeep...something. Anything.

Life in the time of Plasma

Personal Rehab Post #3
After my stumble, we get back on the path to "faking it till I make it." Today I joked around with the girl who visits my desk all the damn time ....we'll call her...hmmmm... Swerve... and put the weekend and it's disappointments behind me. The journey of thousand miles. Man I hope I make it.


I was a broke college student. I don't mean the pansy broke that means you're cutting back on food quality, I mean the kind of broke where you're cutting back on food. There were times when dinner cost me $2 or less, as I would stop at the Spur gas station at the bottom of the hill leaving campus and get a bargin basement pint of juice for fifty cents and a dollar's worth of 'tater logs - potato wedges fried in chicken grease (about 6 or 8 depending on how they felt). Occasionally I would spring the extra quarter and get a Little Debbie snack to treat myself.

Thank god my neighbors cable signal bled through the wall so I had a decent number of channels.

But occasionally there would be a need for a boost, a proverbial (and literal) shot in the arm, a few extra dollars. And that, friends and neighbors, is when you would donate plasma.

I don't see plasma donor spots around anymore, so maybe the laws are different in Georgia. I used to like them because in 40 mins to an hour you could have a fast $20 in your pocket and as an added bonus you got free blood screenings. As long as they would let you donate you knew you were good healthwise. It was like being paid to make a doctor visit, so like groovy.

And that $20 to a college student was a fortune. Or it least it was when gas was a $1 a gallon. A few dollars in the tank, a four dollar six pack and two fifty wing special? Sheeit.

The other bonus was that donating plasma made drinking much more effective. I'm not going to lie, I had worked up a pretty high tolerance while matriculating. One night a friend & I polished off a bottle of 151 proof rum with no chaser like we were drinking soda. It was only after we were done did we then decide we probably should have cut it with something. However, after donating plasma...three beers might leave you to the sleep of babies, drunks and well hung men.

But then I sleep that way all the time. *Rimshot*

Combine the sudden low threshold with the beer barn special where they would fill a gallon jug of cold delicious hops and barley water for $3, young and less than discriminating women and cheap food...well let's just say sometimes you donated plasma to get the party started.

Good times, good times.

Barkeep. What you got back there from 1990?

The McDonalds Saga - A True Story

I do not eat at the most popular fast food restaurant franchise in world. Or at McDonald's either. (Ha!)

I have boycotted the chain for almost 20 years now. I don't eat the burgers, the fries, the shakes, apple pies or even drink water out of McDonald's cooler that sprayed it into a McDonald's cup. If you insist on something from there, I'll stop and do you the favor, but nothing of theirs crosses my lips. A coworker brought me a shake from there once and I'll admit it tasted good..till I saw the McD on the label. I stopped instantly and dropped the rest in the trash, and cussed him out in anger. So why you ask...why the animosity against this corporate monster who brought such lovable processed food pitchmen as Ronald and the Hamburgler.

Yeah, this too is a college story.

I was a broke college student in the summer of 1988 in Tallahassee, Florida. I was taking summer classes, and living low as it were. Very very low. Ramen noodles low. But I'd run into a spot of luck, and in the Olympic Medal Game run by McDonalds that summer, I had scratched off Women's 100m, in which the venerable Florence Griffith Joyner - Flojo - was running on a track somewhere in Seoul, Korea. The world record holder. With the hot pink one legged tights. And if America won the event...then I got a free Big Mac.

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun. Well...no cheese, but food. For a brother living off ramen noodles and jiffy cake, this would be the highlight of the week. I dreamed about that Big Mac.

It was the McDonalds on North Monroe - 1944 North Monroe...just up the street from Barnacle Bills.

I hadn't eaten all. Day. Long.

I pulled into the drive thru - ordered a my free sammich and a water.

And do you know that trick told me that the US did not win the gold, but the silver and all I could get for my gamepiece was some fries? I'm like WTF? (I think I actually said it into the microphone, but for decorum's sake I won't repeat fuck here)

So I went inside to discuss this with someone who knew something. I was very hungry.

I don't normally do confrontation (it's not my thing) but I had to talk to the shift supervisor.

The shift supervisor reiterated that per their information the US had won the Silver in that event and thus only fries were offered as the prize. I informed them that I knew FloJo was running, had taken the gold and was still running for all we knew.

The manager then informed they got their information direct from Seoul. I told them I got my information from the local newspapers and ESPN.

At that point, fed up...I told the manager right then and there, that if I didn't get my Big Mac, that I would NEVER EAT AT A MCDONALDS AGAIN!

And as I haven't eaten there for almost twenty years...you can kinda guess how that conversation ended.

In retrospect, it turns out the US won both gold and silver in the women's 100m that year (isn't that funny) and the company may have been trying to cheap it's way out of paying off in sandwiches. Over time, McDonald's has got the worst end of the deal. In high school, McDonald's had been a regular hangout. In college it might have become as well. As it turned out, when we all piled in the car to get food after that incidient, everybody knew what restaurant wasn't on the list of potential stops. And over time it may have cost that corporation as much, I don't know, $5000...

...guess who's laughing now McDonalds. ha!

Barkeep...let me get one of them Wendy's frostys.

Journey through the Bargain Bin

I've moved into the new house, and after my encounter with the Direct TV installer I'm still waiting to see if I can even get the new fall shows.

(Side story: --- I love Direct TV. Love it. And the little punk who showed up Saturday to install it...at 5pm...on his last call of the day...took one look at my setup and told me it wasn't doable. Then I took him the backyard and he got all snippy about how it wouldn't work. So I told him to set the damn thing up anyway. Then he gets a halfway decent signal, and DOESN'T LOCK IT IN! I'm having somebody else come out...and I'm call Direct TV to get his ass let go if possible. I'm not normally like that, but he fucking my Sunday Ticket!)

In the interim, I've taken to the bane of the modern American economy - Walmart. First I found two that actually close at night to my surprise, but I've taken to wandering the one closest to me looking for a distraction. In the back aisle of the Electronics section, I've stumbled across the bargain bin. The previous bargain bins I've looked in at a Walmart usually have had a mix of direct-to-video and Spanish language films, so I was skeptical, then I found this one. On the surface there were nine copies of Along Came Polly and countless Dickie Roberts: Child Star DVDs. But I was desperate and so I started digging.

There, in the among the forty copies of the Man from Snowy River I found Oscar nominee Sideways. And then Wallace and Gromit! These were good, fairly recent movies in among the compilations of no longer copyright protected cartoons and BMX Madness 2007. I kept digging...the Addams Family movies in a double DVD! Rocky and Bullwinkle! People wandered by, decided that the Ultimate Edition of Jim Carrey: Rubberface wasn't what they were in the mood for and left.

I shudder to think what might be even lower in the bin. Maybe Bond? Maybe Pirates of the Caribbean? It's like I've found a spot where buried treasure is abundant....and they also carry pans, shoes and sheets.

Am I ashamed that I've sold out to the corporate vampire that feeds on our national soul, plucking the dream of family business out of the heart of America and selling it to us at low low prices?

Did I mention there's another bin below this one that hasn't even been touched?

Barkeep, um...president's choice soda in a dirty glass.