Lime - Tequila Wings

Springtime is Grill Time

I am sick of winter - sick of snow - sick of warming up the car before going anywhere.  Everything takes so much work, too much time.  Probably the only great thing about winter is Christmas (well the holidays in general). 

Thanksgiving is fun but demands a shit load of work.  The menu gets planned a week or two in advance.  Shopping, cleaning, prepping, blah blah blah.  The actual meal itself takes hours (hours!) to make and in twenty minutes it's over.  Then more cleaning.  Once that's done, then - and only then - is my favorite part: drinking and playing family games.

Christmas is exhausting: more planning, shopping, cleaning.  Add in decorating, more shopping, wrapping.  Weeks in the planning and in twenty minutes it's over.  Clean all that up and (don't forget Christmas dinner!) after that... drinking and playing family games.  See a pattern here?

Then January, February - pfbbbbbbt.  (That's the stick your tongue out and blow sound.)

Yeah, it's winter and I'm enjoying that cigar - making
the now-famous Lime Tequila Wings!

Why can't we just drink and play games and get right to the good stuff?  (That's called college...)

Kids have it easy - bundle up, go outside and play in the snow.  By high school, you adopt that Too-Cool-For-The-Room attitude and building a snowman is off the radar.  In college, drinking and playing games (usually drinking games) LEADS to playing outside in the snow!  The shitty thing about being an adult is how much freaking work it takes to have fun.  Especially in the  long, dark, boring, crappy winter months.

Well here it is... Spring is just around the corner.  Easier to get out and go!  Get out and do!  Golfing, grilling, (kick your feet up and light up a cigar) YEAH BABY!   
I feel myself turning the corner and ready to share moronic observations and culinary adventures and kitchen disasters.  Enjoy life, laugh a little bit.  Let's go...

THE Lime Tequila Wings - to be pronounced the same way
they say, "THE Ohio State University"

 Yep.  It's worth it - braving the cold, liquid courage (liquid furnace?) in hand, working the grill!  See ya out there...

Mark Zuckerberg, You're Fired

I have realized that I spend a great deal of time just reading about other people's lives.  Not that other people are not funny or interesting.  It's the time.  I could spend hours clicking and reading.  Following threads and posts.  At the end of all that, what do I have?  Knowledge?  Not much.  Clarity?  Very little.  So I'm done.  No more Facebook.

This is just like when I was a kid and quit television cold turkey.  The realization hit me like a ton of bricks.  All that time wasted.  The hours ticked by and there I sat doing nothing.  I was all of twelve years old.

Turning on the TV after school was always the same: Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Hogan's Heroes, Dick Van Dyke Show, and others.  Hours of sitting around with eyes glued to the set.  Day after day - every day. At least three hours of fake television laugh tracks even before dinner time.  Prime time television was even more time spent barely blinking.

Four to five hours per weekday totaled twenty to twenty-five hours.  BOOM!  That's one whole damn day! I was giving up an entire day of my week, every week.  In the years between age 7 to age 12, I had lost one whole year of my life sitting in front of the TV doing nothing.  (Yeah, I actually thought logically about stuff as a kid - some things never change.)

Giving up TV was weirdly liberating.  Now I am hoping for that same lift by giving up Facebook.

I still love writing and I'd like to continue my blog.  If you'd like to keep reading it, feel free.  You may find it easier to click the follower tab at the bottom of the page.  Or click the RSS feed.  Posts will be delivered to you.  Click on the comment below and share stuff if you'd like.  But if you've linked to the blog via Facebook in the past I won't be there.  The blog is not my problem - Facebook is my problem.  Not interested.

You may decide you are done reading blog posts that are wasting your time - that's cool.  Have fun - live life.

Until we eat again,
Doug

What the Hell is Tapenade

I LOVE bloopers.  I even like the word.  BLOOPER.  Scott Prather (ESPN 1420) posted a link to Dish Network's outtakes from Peyton Manning's commercial.  You can click here to see the clip for NFL Sunday Ticket bloopers from Scott's blog.



Scott's blog post correctly notes that many tapenade recipes include anchovies (EWWWW!) which tends to make the tapenade too salty.  Recognizing this, I created a recipe for tapenade that uses sauteed vegetables along with the olives to taste great and still be tapenade-y.

So what?  Hey if Peyton Manning likes tapenade and football.  Together.  Maybe you should try it too.

You can spread it on a muffaletta sandwich - which is a delicious Italian sandwich with meats and cheese - like a sub, only better.  Click here for a muffaletta recipe from the Serious Eats blog.  And... be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page to read comments from pompous gas-bags spouting off about the "True Muffaletta" characteristics.  Lighten up people - it's food.

Olive Tapenade

2 dozen pitted olives - green and kalamata mix

5 medium white mushrooms

1/2 medium onion

1 large celery stalk

olive oil

fresh lemon juice

Coarsely chop all the veggies and toss them into a skillet with olive oil.  Sweat until done about 5 minutes.  Add more olive oil until coated and a teaspoon of lemon juice.  Grind fresh pepper to taste. Mix well.  Chill.  You too.

A Beautiful Turd

It's 7:38 PM and I am outside with a scotch and a cigar licking my wounds because my roasted chicken didn't turn out right.  I am being a petulant turd.  Did you ever see "A Beautiful Mind"?  The scene where John Nash loses at the board game  -"The Hubris of the Defeated"  he claims the game is flawed, his play was perfect.

My roasted chicken was flawed, but my play was not perfect:  whole chicken, stuffed with fresh thyme, onion, lemon.  Seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper.  Oven baked for eighty minutes at 375...  it should have cooked all the way through.  It did not.  Damn.

Why?  AAAARRRGGGGHHH!  Well, I fucked up.  I ran out of propane for the grill.  I ALWAYS do this on the grill.  The grill thermometer reads 375.  It takes about an hour and twenty minutes on my grill.  I move to plan B... the oven.  Specifically the oven at 375.  Not the same thing...

My play was not perfect.  Nope.  Not done.  

I got impatient.  We are hungry.  Took it out, carved the breast meat.  The bird was giving me the bird.  Hahahaha!  You carnivorous bastard!  Still pink!

I'd love to say I microwaved the somewhat uncooked chicken, topped it with a marvelous sauce, poured more wine and salvaged the evening.  Nope.  Not suave.

The most recent issue of "Food & Wine" magazine has this sweet recipe from Grace Parisi for Scallops with Grapefruit and Bacon.  (I would give you a link here, but there is none!  God, could this day get any shittier?)  She (is awesome by the way...) says cook bacon at moderate heat until crisp ABOUT 3 MINUTES!  There is no freaking way bacon is going to be crisp on my stove after just 3 minutes!  Maybe hers, but not mine!

Lesson learned:  adjust times to your cooking modulus.  I have cooked bacon on my stove often enough to know that CRISP bacon is going to take longer than three fucking minutes.  I know the desired result.  Duh.  Bacon.  Crisp.  

I also know my stove.  And my oven.  And my grill.  The first rule in cooking something great (or at least good) - know your kitchen.  Then think about what you are doing.

The good news... tomorrow we will eat again.  I let you down, but I will be better.

By the way, John Nash turned that game theory into a Nobel Prize.

That chicken?  It's gonna be some awesome soup...take that you poultry bastard.  Until we eat again...  Peace.

Second City Sushi

Chopsticks: love 'em or hate 'em?  Did you catch the report on CNN about the American company that exports chopsticks to China (instead of the other way around)?  Georgia Chopsticks is an exporter of chopsticks and the company cannot keep up with the demand!

I happen to love chopsticks.  I learned to use chopsticks at an early age. When we were kids the choice of restaurant to celebrate our birthdays was DOMINATED by Benihana!  I loved watching the chef flipping knives, working fast, tapping rhythms with salt and pepper shakers.  This certainly was an influence and piqued my interest in learning to cook.

Sooo...  Fast forward.  Buddy of mine is in town, wants to take me to dinner.  I suggested a place near the office: Marc's Fusion Cafe for some amazing sushi.

You'd think he just ate a lemon.  His face contorts, his shoulders lift, "Sushi??  Ewww."

Dude.

It's fresh, it's fun.  Going out for sushi encourages chatting at the table, relaxing.  Not for Bob.

Okayyy... got me thinking here.  It's gotta be the very idea of raw fish.  (Now I know that "maki" is a sliced roll and "sashimi"  is a piece of fish, but we're gonna go with this one...)

Uncooked fish making you squirm a bit?  Fine.  Try my Second City Sushi!  We live in the Midwest!  It's steak and potato with a red-wine reduction for the sauce.  (Umm...Doug, why not just make a steak and potato?)  Good question, glad ya asked!

1. Small pieces, you can eat with your hands!  (Dudes love finger food!)  
2. Lots and lots of combinations here:

• Substitute chicken, pork, shrimp for the protein.  
• Substitute for the rice: potato, pasta, sprouts, cucumber (or leave the rice in there)

      3.  It's fun  (Gee it seems like a lot of work)  Yeah - but fun sometimes means work - ever go camping?

Play with your food!  Let me know what you think!