I think I got the ultimate compliment last night when my mother told me that I really needed to write down the recipe for what I made - my riff on Italian Sausage and Peppers. So here's the recipe:
Joe's Kinda Sorta Italian Sausage and Peppers
Ingredients:
1 to 1.5 lbs. Italian sausage, or 6 links - I use a large link sausage I get at Costco, but any good sausage will do.
1 medium onion, halved then sliced thinly, but not too thinly
3 green bell peppers, cut into matchstick-sized slices
12 pitted Kalamata olives, sliced in half lengthwise
4 - 5 cloves garlic, minced
2 15oz. cans of tomato sauce
2 tbsp. dried Italian seasoning
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. grated Romano cheese
Instructions:
(It's optional to break up the sausage if you have links, but not necessary.)
Add one tablespoon olive oil to a large saute pan or skillet over medium heat, then brown the sausage and remove the sausage. Add the second tablespoon of oil to what oil is still in the pan, then add the onions, peppers, and olives, and cook until the onions have become translucent - about 6 to 8 minutes. Add in the garlic and cook for another 3 to 5 minutes, until the garlic has begun to take on a little color. Return the sausage to the pan, then add the tomato sauce and cook for a few minutes. Add in the Italian seasoning and balsamic vinegar, and cook just until the sauce begins to bubble up. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 30 minutes, then add the Romano cheese just before serving.
Recipe should make six servings.
Serving:
If you broke up the sausage, I'd serve it on top of a noodle pasta like fettucine, or perhaps a tubular pasta like penne. If you kept the sausage whole, a good idea would be to warm up some good rolls in the oven, then split them and brush the inside of the roll with some melted garlic butter (quick recipe: melt a stick of butter in the microwave, then add a teaspoon of garlic powder, and give the mixture a few minutes to let the garlic permeate). Drop a sausage in the bun, top it with the sauce and a little more romano cheese, then enjoy with a nice salad or coleslaw on the side.
Cheers!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
How To Make A Bomb In Your Kitchen
A Mighty Bacon Bomb, that is.
There are really three ways of making a Bacon Bomb, otherwise known as a bacon-wrapped meat loaf. The simplest method is to just take your own meat loaf recipe, and before you put the loaf in its pan, layer the bottom of the pan with slices of bacon (otherwise known as rashers), and lay a few more on top of the loaf should the rashers on the bottom of the pan not be able to reach all the way around. Other than maybe adding a few more minutes' cooking time, you can follow your own recipe pretty much to the letter.
But here's how I make the Mighty Bacon Bomb.
Ingredients:
Loaf
2 - 2.5 lbs. lean ground beef
1 lb. pork sausage - for even more bacony goodness, try Farmland's Pork & Bacon Sausage
1 twelve-ounce package of bacon - preferably not thick-sliced
1 medium onion, finely diced (optional: 1 green bell pepper, finely diced, or a can of diced green chilis)
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 - 1.5 cups Panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs) or regular unseasoned bread crumbs
2 eggs
Barbecue Sauce/Glaze
1 can (15 oz.) tomato sauce
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. yellow mustard
1 - 2 dashes of the hot sauce of your choice (Tabasco or Sriracha work best)
A few drops of liquid smoke
Instructions
Set aside the bacon. Combine all the other loaf ingredients in a large bowl and knead together until the mixture is relatively homogenous, but don't over-mix.
Here's where things get interesting. Since this is such a large recipe, a regular loaf pan may not work all that well. Usually, I put the loaf into a large rectangular (8" x 11" or so) casserole dish. Then I lay down rashers of bacon on top of the loaf, lengthwise. Then I weave the remaining rashers into the lengthwise strips - basically making a mat of bacon. I snip off the excess of the second set of rashers, and use them to fill in any gaps in the mat and make it look relatively even.
But tonight, at Joy's behest, I tried using a regular loaf pan. What I did was line the bottom of the pan with bacon like I mentioned at the top of this article, put the mixture inthe pan, then covered the top with more bacon. The loaf went into a preheated 400-degree oven. Because of the thickness of the loaf, I wound up taking nearly 90 minutes to cook it through to an internal temperature of about 160 degrees, and dropping the oven down to 350 degrees to keep the outside of the loaf from burning.
From here on out, we'll go back to using the casserole dish for our example. After putting the loaf mixture in the casserole dish and assembling the mat, cover the loaf in a layer of tinfoil and place in a 400-degree oven for 45 minutes. In a medium saucepan, combine the barbecue sauce ingredients in order over medium heat and cook until the sauce just starts to bubble up, about eight to ten minutes or so. Drop the heat to low and let the sauce simmer.
When the timer on the oven goes off, take about half a cup of your sauce and put it in a ramekin. Pull the loaf from the oven, and drain off as much of the fat as possible to a suitable container. (NOTE: You may have to do this more than once during the cooking process. A good safety measure would be to have a cookie sheet under the cooking vessel to catch any fat that drips from the cooking vessel.) Bring the loaf up to the stove top, remove the foil, and brush the loaf with the sauce in the ramekin. Return the loaf to the oven without the foil for another fifteen minutes, or until the loaf hits an internal temperature of 160 degrees. Pull the loaf out of the oven, and let it stand for a few minutes before slicing it thin for serving. This recipe should serve five or six adults, with leftovers for sandwiches the next morning.
Here's what my loaf looked like tonight in a regular loaf pan:
Just a big ol' nasty mess, ain't it? But damn it, it tastes good! This is family cooking for the family that just loves food, and is willing to work that Mighty Bacon Bomb off later that night, or the next day. In fact, I think I'll take a nice walk...... once the Mighty Bacon Bomb coma wears off. Cheers!
There are really three ways of making a Bacon Bomb, otherwise known as a bacon-wrapped meat loaf. The simplest method is to just take your own meat loaf recipe, and before you put the loaf in its pan, layer the bottom of the pan with slices of bacon (otherwise known as rashers), and lay a few more on top of the loaf should the rashers on the bottom of the pan not be able to reach all the way around. Other than maybe adding a few more minutes' cooking time, you can follow your own recipe pretty much to the letter.
But here's how I make the Mighty Bacon Bomb.
Ingredients:
Loaf
2 - 2.5 lbs. lean ground beef
1 lb. pork sausage - for even more bacony goodness, try Farmland's Pork & Bacon Sausage
1 twelve-ounce package of bacon - preferably not thick-sliced
1 medium onion, finely diced (optional: 1 green bell pepper, finely diced, or a can of diced green chilis)
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 - 1.5 cups Panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs) or regular unseasoned bread crumbs
2 eggs
Barbecue Sauce/Glaze
1 can (15 oz.) tomato sauce
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. yellow mustard
1 - 2 dashes of the hot sauce of your choice (Tabasco or Sriracha work best)
A few drops of liquid smoke
Instructions
Set aside the bacon. Combine all the other loaf ingredients in a large bowl and knead together until the mixture is relatively homogenous, but don't over-mix.
Here's where things get interesting. Since this is such a large recipe, a regular loaf pan may not work all that well. Usually, I put the loaf into a large rectangular (8" x 11" or so) casserole dish. Then I lay down rashers of bacon on top of the loaf, lengthwise. Then I weave the remaining rashers into the lengthwise strips - basically making a mat of bacon. I snip off the excess of the second set of rashers, and use them to fill in any gaps in the mat and make it look relatively even.
But tonight, at Joy's behest, I tried using a regular loaf pan. What I did was line the bottom of the pan with bacon like I mentioned at the top of this article, put the mixture inthe pan, then covered the top with more bacon. The loaf went into a preheated 400-degree oven. Because of the thickness of the loaf, I wound up taking nearly 90 minutes to cook it through to an internal temperature of about 160 degrees, and dropping the oven down to 350 degrees to keep the outside of the loaf from burning.
From here on out, we'll go back to using the casserole dish for our example. After putting the loaf mixture in the casserole dish and assembling the mat, cover the loaf in a layer of tinfoil and place in a 400-degree oven for 45 minutes. In a medium saucepan, combine the barbecue sauce ingredients in order over medium heat and cook until the sauce just starts to bubble up, about eight to ten minutes or so. Drop the heat to low and let the sauce simmer.
When the timer on the oven goes off, take about half a cup of your sauce and put it in a ramekin. Pull the loaf from the oven, and drain off as much of the fat as possible to a suitable container. (NOTE: You may have to do this more than once during the cooking process. A good safety measure would be to have a cookie sheet under the cooking vessel to catch any fat that drips from the cooking vessel.) Bring the loaf up to the stove top, remove the foil, and brush the loaf with the sauce in the ramekin. Return the loaf to the oven without the foil for another fifteen minutes, or until the loaf hits an internal temperature of 160 degrees. Pull the loaf out of the oven, and let it stand for a few minutes before slicing it thin for serving. This recipe should serve five or six adults, with leftovers for sandwiches the next morning.
Here's what my loaf looked like tonight in a regular loaf pan:
Just a big ol' nasty mess, ain't it? But damn it, it tastes good! This is family cooking for the family that just loves food, and is willing to work that Mighty Bacon Bomb off later that night, or the next day. In fact, I think I'll take a nice walk...... once the Mighty Bacon Bomb coma wears off. Cheers!
Monday, April 16, 2012
Soccer In The South?
Sorry if I've neglected you here on this other side of my brain. Nothing has really grabbed me that much, enough to put it into this blog. But as I wrote this post on the comment threads at ESPN's website, I realized that I had a good blog post here, so here's what I wrote:
What nobody is really talking about is why there won't likely be any expansion in MLS beyond 20 franchises. It isn't a matter of what cities would make good homes for potential franchises. It isn't stadium issues, dilution of talent pools, promotion/relegation, or anything like that. Here's what the issues are, in no particular order.
1.) FIFA is mandating that domestic first-division leagues limit themselves to no more than twenty teams, in order to ease schedule congestion for clubs and national teams alike, and to ease demands on players. This mandate came up about a year or two ago, and didn't get noticed much beyond a few press reports. In theory, MLS could potentially expand beyond twenty teams because of the multinational nature of the North American soccer structure - MLS, NASL, and USL clubs represent five FIFA member nations (US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Antigua & Barbuda) - therefore requiring a need to expand beyond twenty first-division teams to encompass those nations. But I don't think MLS would want to risk incurring the wrath of FIFA over the issue and risk penalizing the leagues and national teams. FIFA has already been pushing MLS to move to a traditional (fall-to-spring) schedule for several years now as it is, and its quite likely that had the Russian FA not offered to, and did move its top two divisions from their usual summer schedule to the traditional fall-to-spring schedule, FIFA may not have awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
2.) Past failures loom large in the MLS front office. Remember, the entire concept of MLS as a single-entity organization instead of an alliance of like-minded individual organization is because of the spectacular flameout of the original NASL. The structure of the league was created with the specific purpose of spreading out financial losses and gains as widely as possible, so no single organization could either dominate or decimate the league as a whole by its financial superiority or lack thereof. And MLS' folding of Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion FC was arguably the league's nadir, when nobody was really sure if the league would last much longer - even those within the MLS front office. Since then, the league has improved, largely due not only sound leadership, but to the number and quality of investor/operators (don't call them owners) brought into the fold, people who understand the game and understand that success doesn't just come overnight - unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, of course. That said, there really hasn't been that much interest from the kind of people who can afford things like MLS franchises in the Southeast, outside of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who has publicly stated that he was interested in joining MLS and bringing a franchise to Atlanta. Fans can say whatever they want about what city is most deserving, but fans can't pony up the US$100m expansion fee MLS is supposedly asking for the rights to that 20th franchise.
3.) Here's the big one for me: Can an MLS franchise draw in more than just the hardcore soccer fan in the Southeast? You might think I'm full of it with my other points, but we can all agree on this - in the Southeast, SEC football and NASCAR are king. Even the NFL plays second- or even third-fiddle to the SEC and NASCAR in most of the South. If you think I'm crazy, I've got two words for you: Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami and Tampa Bay have had attendance problems as well, and the only reason New Orleans and Atlanta are succesful in the stands is because they're successful on the field. (NOTE: I'm not really including Carolina here, because as past commenters have noted, North Carolina is really more mid-Atlantic than Southern, though NC is the heart and soul of NASCAR) What I'm getting at is this: would an MLS franchise in the Southeast be able to lure in the average sports fan, a man who's heard of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo from SportsCenter, but likely wouldn't be able to pick either out of a lineup of Buddhist monks?
To close, MLS returning to the Southeast reminds me a lot of the NHL's expansion into the Sun Belt in the 90's. While it's worked in some markets, like Dallas and Tampa Bay, it's been a miserable failure in others (I'm looking at you, Phoenix and Atlanta). It will have to take the right owner in the right city. For the time being, my money is on none of the above. the more likely option for the Southeast won't be getting a 21st or 22nd franchise - even if MLS chose to expand that far. MLS returning to the Southeast will also not likely be something along the lines of its recent expansion, cherry-picking the most successful second-division clubs from the NASL and USL - if that were the case, either Rochester or Charleston would be in MLS by now. Instead, it'll likely mean an existing franchise moving to an Atlanta, New Orleans or a Florida market. I'll go out on a limb and say that Atlanta would be the best place, with ownership and facilities already in place.
What nobody is really talking about is why there won't likely be any expansion in MLS beyond 20 franchises. It isn't a matter of what cities would make good homes for potential franchises. It isn't stadium issues, dilution of talent pools, promotion/relegation, or anything like that. Here's what the issues are, in no particular order.
1.) FIFA is mandating that domestic first-division leagues limit themselves to no more than twenty teams, in order to ease schedule congestion for clubs and national teams alike, and to ease demands on players. This mandate came up about a year or two ago, and didn't get noticed much beyond a few press reports. In theory, MLS could potentially expand beyond twenty teams because of the multinational nature of the North American soccer structure - MLS, NASL, and USL clubs represent five FIFA member nations (US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Antigua & Barbuda) - therefore requiring a need to expand beyond twenty first-division teams to encompass those nations. But I don't think MLS would want to risk incurring the wrath of FIFA over the issue and risk penalizing the leagues and national teams. FIFA has already been pushing MLS to move to a traditional (fall-to-spring) schedule for several years now as it is, and its quite likely that had the Russian FA not offered to, and did move its top two divisions from their usual summer schedule to the traditional fall-to-spring schedule, FIFA may not have awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
2.) Past failures loom large in the MLS front office. Remember, the entire concept of MLS as a single-entity organization instead of an alliance of like-minded individual organization is because of the spectacular flameout of the original NASL. The structure of the league was created with the specific purpose of spreading out financial losses and gains as widely as possible, so no single organization could either dominate or decimate the league as a whole by its financial superiority or lack thereof. And MLS' folding of Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion FC was arguably the league's nadir, when nobody was really sure if the league would last much longer - even those within the MLS front office. Since then, the league has improved, largely due not only sound leadership, but to the number and quality of investor/operators (don't call them owners) brought into the fold, people who understand the game and understand that success doesn't just come overnight - unless you live in the Pacific Northwest, of course. That said, there really hasn't been that much interest from the kind of people who can afford things like MLS franchises in the Southeast, outside of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who has publicly stated that he was interested in joining MLS and bringing a franchise to Atlanta. Fans can say whatever they want about what city is most deserving, but fans can't pony up the US$100m expansion fee MLS is supposedly asking for the rights to that 20th franchise.
3.) Here's the big one for me: Can an MLS franchise draw in more than just the hardcore soccer fan in the Southeast? You might think I'm full of it with my other points, but we can all agree on this - in the Southeast, SEC football and NASCAR are king. Even the NFL plays second- or even third-fiddle to the SEC and NASCAR in most of the South. If you think I'm crazy, I've got two words for you: Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami and Tampa Bay have had attendance problems as well, and the only reason New Orleans and Atlanta are succesful in the stands is because they're successful on the field. (NOTE: I'm not really including Carolina here, because as past commenters have noted, North Carolina is really more mid-Atlantic than Southern, though NC is the heart and soul of NASCAR) What I'm getting at is this: would an MLS franchise in the Southeast be able to lure in the average sports fan, a man who's heard of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo from SportsCenter, but likely wouldn't be able to pick either out of a lineup of Buddhist monks?
To close, MLS returning to the Southeast reminds me a lot of the NHL's expansion into the Sun Belt in the 90's. While it's worked in some markets, like Dallas and Tampa Bay, it's been a miserable failure in others (I'm looking at you, Phoenix and Atlanta). It will have to take the right owner in the right city. For the time being, my money is on none of the above. the more likely option for the Southeast won't be getting a 21st or 22nd franchise - even if MLS chose to expand that far. MLS returning to the Southeast will also not likely be something along the lines of its recent expansion, cherry-picking the most successful second-division clubs from the NASL and USL - if that were the case, either Rochester or Charleston would be in MLS by now. Instead, it'll likely mean an existing franchise moving to an Atlanta, New Orleans or a Florida market. I'll go out on a limb and say that Atlanta would be the best place, with ownership and facilities already in place.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Pro Bowl Blahs
Sorry that I've been neglecting this blog for so long. I need this blog for my thoughts that aren't necessarily music or band-related. And now that I have my very own laptop, I can blog pretty much anytime, anywhere. So here's some random blathering that I typed up a few hours ago:
I'm watching the NFL's Pro Bowl today, and while I'm glad that the league decided to return their annual all-star game to Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawai'i, it still doesn't seem all that big a draw for the local audience from what the TV cameras show. Hell, the only reason a lot of those players are even there is because the League is compelling them to be there, by not excusing players from skipping the Pro Bowl for any other reason than injury, legitimate emergency, or for playing in the Super Bowl the following week.
The problem I see with the Pro Bowl is that for the most part, it's the same guys playing the same game at the same time every year. With the system in place for choosing players (a combination of fan and player balloting), it sets it up that once a player reaches the level of being one of the best two or three at their position, inclusion to the Pro Bowl becomes almost automatic for the remainder of that player's career. And after a while, going to Hawai'i right after the conclusion of the season may – as crazy as it seems – get boring for them. So what I think the NFL needs to do to spice up the experience for the players is quite simple: take the Pro Bowl on the road.
So where would you take the Pro Bowl to? Last year, the NFL moved the game to the site of that season's Super Bowl (Miami-Dade, FL), where the response was..... well, it was kinda meh. Let's face it, while Miami is a great place, it's just another NFL city to the players. So here's my thoughts on where the Pro Bowl should go: ANYWHERE BUT AMERICA. Here's some ideas:
First off, Canada makes a good place to start. With large domed stadia in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, the game would be pretty much weatherproof. Other pluses to having a Pro Bowl in Canada would be adding the Canadian Football League's All-Star Game to the Pro Bowl festivities, and having the game in Toronto would also help gauge that area's support for a possible NFL franchise in Hogtowne, be it either an expansion franchise or an existing franchise (with the Buffalo Bills the most likely candidate). The downside would be well, going to Canada in the dead of winter – probably not most players' idea of fun.
The next idea would be Europe, specifically the cities with past association to the NFL's World League of American Football (WLAF)/NFL Europa, with those cities being London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, and Berlin. Taking the Pro Bowl to Europe would bring a whole new level of excitement to American Football fans in Europe. Oh, you don't think there are NFL fans in Europe? Then why was it that any time I saw Dusseldorf's Rhein Fire playing at home (that being either Dusseldorf's Waldstadion or the aufSchalke Arena in the suburb of Schalke), there was always a huge, and most importantly local crowd there to support the home team? More over, staging Pro Bowls in Europe would give the NFL a barometer towards future expansion in Europe.
But in my opinion, the best route for the Pro Bowl would be taking it Down Under. If you're going to send these players someplace, why not send them someplace they've really never been to? And it wouldn't hurt to have the game in a Southern Hemisphere summer. Why not Melbourne or Sydney? Why not Auckland, New Zealand, or Cape Town or Johannesburg in South Africa? Hell, why not go completely off the proverbial grid and stage a Pro Bowl in Rio? Sao Paulo? Buenos Aires? Why not Tokyo, Beijing, or even Dubai? The NFL has long stated a desire to become a truly global entity, so why not take that next step, and take the Pro Bowl truly global? Why not create a continental rotation, where the 2013 game would be in Melbourne, then the following year in London, Cape Town the year after that, and so on?
I'm watching the NFL's Pro Bowl today, and while I'm glad that the league decided to return their annual all-star game to Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawai'i, it still doesn't seem all that big a draw for the local audience from what the TV cameras show. Hell, the only reason a lot of those players are even there is because the League is compelling them to be there, by not excusing players from skipping the Pro Bowl for any other reason than injury, legitimate emergency, or for playing in the Super Bowl the following week.
The problem I see with the Pro Bowl is that for the most part, it's the same guys playing the same game at the same time every year. With the system in place for choosing players (a combination of fan and player balloting), it sets it up that once a player reaches the level of being one of the best two or three at their position, inclusion to the Pro Bowl becomes almost automatic for the remainder of that player's career. And after a while, going to Hawai'i right after the conclusion of the season may – as crazy as it seems – get boring for them. So what I think the NFL needs to do to spice up the experience for the players is quite simple: take the Pro Bowl on the road.
So where would you take the Pro Bowl to? Last year, the NFL moved the game to the site of that season's Super Bowl (Miami-Dade, FL), where the response was..... well, it was kinda meh. Let's face it, while Miami is a great place, it's just another NFL city to the players. So here's my thoughts on where the Pro Bowl should go: ANYWHERE BUT AMERICA. Here's some ideas:
First off, Canada makes a good place to start. With large domed stadia in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, the game would be pretty much weatherproof. Other pluses to having a Pro Bowl in Canada would be adding the Canadian Football League's All-Star Game to the Pro Bowl festivities, and having the game in Toronto would also help gauge that area's support for a possible NFL franchise in Hogtowne, be it either an expansion franchise or an existing franchise (with the Buffalo Bills the most likely candidate). The downside would be well, going to Canada in the dead of winter – probably not most players' idea of fun.
The next idea would be Europe, specifically the cities with past association to the NFL's World League of American Football (WLAF)/NFL Europa, with those cities being London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, and Berlin. Taking the Pro Bowl to Europe would bring a whole new level of excitement to American Football fans in Europe. Oh, you don't think there are NFL fans in Europe? Then why was it that any time I saw Dusseldorf's Rhein Fire playing at home (that being either Dusseldorf's Waldstadion or the aufSchalke Arena in the suburb of Schalke), there was always a huge, and most importantly local crowd there to support the home team? More over, staging Pro Bowls in Europe would give the NFL a barometer towards future expansion in Europe.
But in my opinion, the best route for the Pro Bowl would be taking it Down Under. If you're going to send these players someplace, why not send them someplace they've really never been to? And it wouldn't hurt to have the game in a Southern Hemisphere summer. Why not Melbourne or Sydney? Why not Auckland, New Zealand, or Cape Town or Johannesburg in South Africa? Hell, why not go completely off the proverbial grid and stage a Pro Bowl in Rio? Sao Paulo? Buenos Aires? Why not Tokyo, Beijing, or even Dubai? The NFL has long stated a desire to become a truly global entity, so why not take that next step, and take the Pro Bowl truly global? Why not create a continental rotation, where the 2013 game would be in Melbourne, then the following year in London, Cape Town the year after that, and so on?
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Pruning The Family Tree
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In no way whatsoever am I suggesting that I would enact physical violence against my in-laws, unless in self-defense as a last resort.
That said, I just took another one of my in-laws off my Facebook friends list, and she deserved it. Just when I thought all the ruckus from my in-laws' humiliation of my wife from the family camping trip had subsided, she chose to bring it back up again. Oh, she made a weak-ass claim that it might not have been about my flaming my in-laws after all that, but I knew better. And I was able to confirm it with a simple two- word post:
"too bad."
And she had the nerve to threaten physical violence against me after I revealed her true colors! Oh, I have better weapons to use against your cellulite-ridden carcass than my fists, dearie. I have shame, repudiation, vindication, and humiliations galore to use. In so many words, if you think my wife is faking or exaggerating her illnesses, or you don't like the fact that I am more than happy to call anyone out on their bullshit, then get the fuck out of my life. We have no further use for you.
And with that, I award the Fred Phelps Award for The Dumbest Humanoid On The Planet to my former sister-in-law, Nancy Gingrich-Walker. I don't give a flying fuck if you don't like that I air out the family's dirty laundry. That's my wife they've been talking about, and if you'd rather defend them than the truth, by all means - go down with the sinking ship. May (insert they deity of your choice here) have mercy upon your soul.
That said, I just took another one of my in-laws off my Facebook friends list, and she deserved it. Just when I thought all the ruckus from my in-laws' humiliation of my wife from the family camping trip had subsided, she chose to bring it back up again. Oh, she made a weak-ass claim that it might not have been about my flaming my in-laws after all that, but I knew better. And I was able to confirm it with a simple two- word post:
"too bad."
And she had the nerve to threaten physical violence against me after I revealed her true colors! Oh, I have better weapons to use against your cellulite-ridden carcass than my fists, dearie. I have shame, repudiation, vindication, and humiliations galore to use. In so many words, if you think my wife is faking or exaggerating her illnesses, or you don't like the fact that I am more than happy to call anyone out on their bullshit, then get the fuck out of my life. We have no further use for you.
And with that, I award the Fred Phelps Award for The Dumbest Humanoid On The Planet to my former sister-in-law, Nancy Gingrich-Walker. I don't give a flying fuck if you don't like that I air out the family's dirty laundry. That's my wife they've been talking about, and if you'd rather defend them than the truth, by all means - go down with the sinking ship. May (insert they deity of your choice here) have mercy upon your soul.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Enough Whining - Let's Cook, Dammit!
A few months ago, I came across a recipe for pan-fried chicken breasts covered with hummus and coated with panko bread crumbs while I was waiting for Joy in yet another doctor's office. Recently, I tried playing with it a little, and I came up with something pretty damn good. I'll call it......
Miso Horny Chicken.
Here's how it came to be. Have you ever bought instant miso soup at an Asian grocery store? You know, comes in a bag very little English on it because it's fucking Japanese? Well, making the soup is pretty simple - take the small, soft, squishy packet (which is basically condensed miso soup, comprised of miso paste and dashi no moto - broth made from the dried and flaked loin of a fish called bonito) and dump it into two-thirds of a cup of water and stir, then add the larger packet of dried seaweed (likely nori) and veggies and wait for them to hydrate before eating. Well, my mom loves the soup, but hates the nori. So one day while Joy and I had the house to ourselves, I came up with another use for those miso-soup packets. Here's the recipe:
(Serves two)
Ingredients:
Two chicken breasts, roughly 6 - 8oz. each
Two packets instant miso soup base
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Preparation:
Season each chicken breast lightly with salt and pepper. Open the miso soup base packets and empty the contents into a small bowl. Brush each breast liberally with the soup base, then dredge the breasts in the panko to completely cover. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, and panfry breasts for 8 to 10 minutes a side depending on size of the breasts. Serve with rice and steamed vegetables.
Personally, I like to serve this with bok choy (Chinese cabbage), split lengthwise and steamed with chicken broth spiked with garlic, ginger, and a dash of sriracha hot sauce, then take a little of that broth and condense/thicken it into a sauce.
Enjoy, and bon appetit!
Miso Horny Chicken.
Here's how it came to be. Have you ever bought instant miso soup at an Asian grocery store? You know, comes in a bag very little English on it because it's fucking Japanese? Well, making the soup is pretty simple - take the small, soft, squishy packet (which is basically condensed miso soup, comprised of miso paste and dashi no moto - broth made from the dried and flaked loin of a fish called bonito) and dump it into two-thirds of a cup of water and stir, then add the larger packet of dried seaweed (likely nori) and veggies and wait for them to hydrate before eating. Well, my mom loves the soup, but hates the nori. So one day while Joy and I had the house to ourselves, I came up with another use for those miso-soup packets. Here's the recipe:
(Serves two)
Ingredients:
Two chicken breasts, roughly 6 - 8oz. each
Two packets instant miso soup base
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Preparation:
Season each chicken breast lightly with salt and pepper. Open the miso soup base packets and empty the contents into a small bowl. Brush each breast liberally with the soup base, then dredge the breasts in the panko to completely cover. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, and panfry breasts for 8 to 10 minutes a side depending on size of the breasts. Serve with rice and steamed vegetables.
Personally, I like to serve this with bok choy (Chinese cabbage), split lengthwise and steamed with chicken broth spiked with garlic, ginger, and a dash of sriracha hot sauce, then take a little of that broth and condense/thicken it into a sauce.
Enjoy, and bon appetit!
Friday, September 2, 2011
Joe's Simple Solution For A College Football Playoff: The Playoffs Themselves ('Bout Damn Time)
Well, I think you've had plenty of time to digest my proposal so far as to how to fix college football. Well, now we're into the real heart of the matter - the actual playoff system itself. So let's begin, shall we?
Now that we have ten conferences, all conference champions earn automatic berths. Using the human and computer polls that currently serve as the basis for the BCS, six wild-card entries fill out the remainder of the National Championship bracket. With this information, I'll now give you a hypothetical field of sixteen teams. First, the conference champions:
PAC-10: Oregon
Big Ten: Wisconsin
SEC: Alabama
Big East: Penn State
Texas Athletic: Baylor
Mountain West: Boise State
Midwestern: Nebraska
ACC: Florida State
MAC: Ohio
Great Atlantic: Miami (FL)
Add Stanford, Iowa, Georgia, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Clemson as remaining six teams. Okay, the field is set. So how do we get from sixteen teams down to one? Here are my two options First off is a straight single-elimination tournament. Using the same polls that selected the wild-card teams, seed the entire field from #1 to #16. For the sake of arguments, I'll let you seed the teams how you want. For the First Round, let the top eight seeds host the games. From there on out, use the BCS bowl games (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange) plus two others - let's say the Holiday and Cotton Bowls to stage the quarter- and semi-finals, with the National Championship game held say, the Sunday before the Super Bowl.
The overall season schedule could, in theory, look something like this:
2012 Regular Season Start: weekend of Sept. 15-16
2012 Regular Season End: weekend of Nov. 1-2
Ten game season with two bye weeks
First round playoff games: Dec. 22
Quarterfinals: Dec. 29
Semifinals: Jan. 5, 2013
National Championship: Jan. 27, 2013 (presuming that the Super Bowl is held on Feb. 3, 2013)
I take inspiration for my other from the NCAA's method for determining its champion in Men's Ice Hockey. Take those sixteen teams and put them in four regional brackets using the geographically appropriate teams as best as possible, and use the existing bowls for all 15 games. Using those sixteen teams and fifteen bowls, here's a potential bracket:
West Region:
Holiday Bowl (San Diego, CA), 12/22 - Oregon v. Notre Dame
Emerald Bowl (San Francisco, CA) , 12/22 - Stanford v. Boise State
Winners play in Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA), 12/29
Midwest Region:
Alamo Bowl (San Antonio, TX), 12/22 - Oklahoma v. Ohio
Texas Bowl (Houston, TX), 12/22 - Nebraska v. Wisconsin
Winners play in Cotton Bowl (Dallas, TX), 12/29
Southeast Region:
Independence Bowl (Shreveport, LA), 12/22 - Alabama v. Baylor
Liberty Bowl (Memphis, TN), 12/22 - Georgia v. Clemson
Winners play in Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA), 12/29
East Region:
Gator Bowl (Jacksonville, FL), 12/22 - Florida State v. Iowa
Florida Citrus Bowl (Orlando, FL), 12/22 - Miami (FL) v. Penn State
Winners play in Capital One Bowl (Tampa, FL), 12/29
National Semifinals:
Fiesta Bowl (Tempe, AZ) - West champion v. Midwest champion, 1/5/2013
Orange Bowl (Miami-Dade, FL) - Southeast champion v. East champion, 1/5/2013
National Championship:
Championship Game (Arlington, TX) - Semifinal winners, 1/27/2013
"What about the rest of the bowls?"
Simple enough. Teams with at least six wins that failed to qualify for the playoffs are still eligible to play in bowl games not affiliated with the National Championship system, with the bowl games themselves played pretty much as they are now.
So there you have it. A simple system - okay, maybe not as simple as I'd like it to be, but it's workable. The situation as it stands now is unworkable - hell, it's fluid as we speak, with Texas A&M leaving the Big 12 after this season and Oklahoma likely to follow, both schools outraged over the ridiculously unfair advantage created by Texas' deal with ESPN to create its own television channel, the Longhorn Network. The Big 12 may fall apart just as fast as the WAC is, as its elite schools move to the Mountain West, while the MWC loses BYU and Utah this year, and TCU bails for the Big East next year. Most college-football pundits see a future of four sixteen-team conferences hoarding all the power and money for themselves. And that's just not right. Conferences should be about local schools and local rivalries, not continent-spanning, money-spinning behemoths. We already have the NFL for that.
Now that we have ten conferences, all conference champions earn automatic berths. Using the human and computer polls that currently serve as the basis for the BCS, six wild-card entries fill out the remainder of the National Championship bracket. With this information, I'll now give you a hypothetical field of sixteen teams. First, the conference champions:
PAC-10: Oregon
Big Ten: Wisconsin
SEC: Alabama
Big East: Penn State
Texas Athletic: Baylor
Mountain West: Boise State
Midwestern: Nebraska
ACC: Florida State
MAC: Ohio
Great Atlantic: Miami (FL)
Add Stanford, Iowa, Georgia, Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Clemson as remaining six teams. Okay, the field is set. So how do we get from sixteen teams down to one? Here are my two options First off is a straight single-elimination tournament. Using the same polls that selected the wild-card teams, seed the entire field from #1 to #16. For the sake of arguments, I'll let you seed the teams how you want. For the First Round, let the top eight seeds host the games. From there on out, use the BCS bowl games (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange) plus two others - let's say the Holiday and Cotton Bowls to stage the quarter- and semi-finals, with the National Championship game held say, the Sunday before the Super Bowl.
The overall season schedule could, in theory, look something like this:
2012 Regular Season Start: weekend of Sept. 15-16
2012 Regular Season End: weekend of Nov. 1-2
Ten game season with two bye weeks
First round playoff games: Dec. 22
Quarterfinals: Dec. 29
Semifinals: Jan. 5, 2013
National Championship: Jan. 27, 2013 (presuming that the Super Bowl is held on Feb. 3, 2013)
I take inspiration for my other from the NCAA's method for determining its champion in Men's Ice Hockey. Take those sixteen teams and put them in four regional brackets using the geographically appropriate teams as best as possible, and use the existing bowls for all 15 games. Using those sixteen teams and fifteen bowls, here's a potential bracket:
West Region:
Holiday Bowl (San Diego, CA), 12/22 - Oregon v. Notre Dame
Emerald Bowl (San Francisco, CA) , 12/22 - Stanford v. Boise State
Winners play in Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA), 12/29
Midwest Region:
Alamo Bowl (San Antonio, TX), 12/22 - Oklahoma v. Ohio
Texas Bowl (Houston, TX), 12/22 - Nebraska v. Wisconsin
Winners play in Cotton Bowl (Dallas, TX), 12/29
Southeast Region:
Independence Bowl (Shreveport, LA), 12/22 - Alabama v. Baylor
Liberty Bowl (Memphis, TN), 12/22 - Georgia v. Clemson
Winners play in Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA), 12/29
East Region:
Gator Bowl (Jacksonville, FL), 12/22 - Florida State v. Iowa
Florida Citrus Bowl (Orlando, FL), 12/22 - Miami (FL) v. Penn State
Winners play in Capital One Bowl (Tampa, FL), 12/29
National Semifinals:
Fiesta Bowl (Tempe, AZ) - West champion v. Midwest champion, 1/5/2013
Orange Bowl (Miami-Dade, FL) - Southeast champion v. East champion, 1/5/2013
National Championship:
Championship Game (Arlington, TX) - Semifinal winners, 1/27/2013
"What about the rest of the bowls?"
Simple enough. Teams with at least six wins that failed to qualify for the playoffs are still eligible to play in bowl games not affiliated with the National Championship system, with the bowl games themselves played pretty much as they are now.
So there you have it. A simple system - okay, maybe not as simple as I'd like it to be, but it's workable. The situation as it stands now is unworkable - hell, it's fluid as we speak, with Texas A&M leaving the Big 12 after this season and Oklahoma likely to follow, both schools outraged over the ridiculously unfair advantage created by Texas' deal with ESPN to create its own television channel, the Longhorn Network. The Big 12 may fall apart just as fast as the WAC is, as its elite schools move to the Mountain West, while the MWC loses BYU and Utah this year, and TCU bails for the Big East next year. Most college-football pundits see a future of four sixteen-team conferences hoarding all the power and money for themselves. And that's just not right. Conferences should be about local schools and local rivalries, not continent-spanning, money-spinning behemoths. We already have the NFL for that.
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