Back In Town

We spent the last few days down South and just returned to find 30+ inches of Global Warming awaiting us!

How’d that happen?

Oh Holy Night

Oh night divine.

Peace and blessings, Dear Friends.

ths sends: From casa de major dad, we wish you all a most heartfelt, “God bless you, every one”.

Groovy Christmas Memories

Especially when Dad was Dean Martin

If this picture of conventional, domestic bliss sounds too good to be true, Deana concedes that their house guests were out of the ordinary. There was Oscar-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn in the living room playing The Second Time Around. Or Rosemary Clooney popping in on Christmas Eve to sing carols. And Frank Sinatra encouraged Deana to take singing lessons.

These Steaks Are Worth A Lot More Per Pound Than I Am

As our Longtime Readers might have suspected, under this brooding exterior of mine I am somewhat of a sentimental sap, you know the old crusty exterior/gooey interior bit. One of the ways this manifests itself is that, while I don’t give a hoot about the various Hallmark Holidays (Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Aardvark’s Day, whatever) that have been imposed upon us I do care about silly things like…the “anniversary” of my first date with my Bride. My Bride, of course, being a down-to-earth realist, patiently tolerates this sort of heart-pang saccharin (now FDA approved) drivel from me because she groks that by doing so she stands to score some better-then-standard grub and hootch. So it’s win-win.

We are blessed to have an extremely generous relation who sends us occasionally some steaks from Stock Yards. As y’all know I am a big eater fan of Costco’s meat, and by nature a cheap Scottish SOB, and I would never by these steaks for myself.

But I sure as hell will enjoy the dog-snot out of them if someone buys them for me.

I’m big that way.

So I took out these Prime NY Strips and just gave them a light dusting of Montreal seasoning, and I decided just to grill them on the kettle, indirect, with no added wood smoke and a quick sear to finish.

But what to wash them down with? As You, Dear Reader, are aware I lurves me some big brawny fruit bomb pushing cough syrup wines, so I decided to try another wine from one of my favorite vintners, Molly Dooker

For $23 this is a stupendous wine IF you like ’em thick and chewy and fruity…and high test. It is a blend of Shiraz, Merlot and Cabernet Savignon.

and it clocks in at 16% alcohol.

Yeah, baby!

Now I figured I’d try a new recipe for spuds. First get some yukons a’boiling

Get some snippets from the conveniently-placed-on-the-kitchen-table rosemary tree

Dream on, baby. I love you dearly, but you ain’t getting any of these steaks

Anyhoo, when the spuds are just about ready schmear some olive oil on a foiled cookie sheet

place the cooked spuds on the greased sheet

and indulge your inner Phil Sheridan and smash ’em up

well, crush them gently, really; I used the ‘tater masher and smodged down once (not all the way flat, mind you), rotated it 90 degrees and squaged it again to keep the rough pattern. Then sprinkle on that fresh rosemary, a goodly amount of sea salt, some pepper, a little thyme, etc., and pop those babies in a 450 degree oven for 20 minutes

damn this stuff is good

In the meantime I got the charcoal going for the grill; I decided not to use any wood for smoke since I wanted pure beefy gooditude. I also had some asparagus marinating in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and lime and lemon juice which I threw on as the steaks were getting ready. Daughter doesn’t like asparagus, so she got her Green Thing Of Choice

after the spuds had cooked for 20 minutes I turned the oven off but left them in there. This allowed them to continue to crisp up and still be piping hot for when everything else was ready. I always have timing issues when I’m cooking things due to my hap-hazard approach; having a part of the meal that I can put on ‘cruise control’ like this really makes things easier.

Also reducing my stress level is finishing off a bottle of 16% alcohol wine.

the steaks sat for 5 minutes while the asparagus grilled up nicely, and the plates appeared thusly

The steaks were divine, the asparagus very yum, and the potatoes were really a treat: crisp, crunchy, salty and savory; a nice change from baked/mashed and definitely a method that will be used again.

Spam Of The Day

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“You’ve got a great bargain understanding of this matter”

Damn, they’ve got me pegged.

The Giants Weren’t The Only Ones Who Collapsed Last Night

What the hell are the Republicans in the Senate thinking here?

The Senate unexpectedly approved food safety legislation by voice vote Sunday evening, rescuing a bill that floated in limbo for weeks because of a clerical error.

…Democrats first attempted to attach the food safety bill to the two-and-a-half-month spending measure but Republicans balked because they wanted to keep that measure clean, according to Senate aides.

Republicans, however, later agreed to pass it by voice vote.

Why are they agreeing to help get Harry Reid’s ass out of the sling he put it in?

CHICKEN!!!!

nom-nom-nom

The Giants Stink

But they sure do so in an entertaining fashion!

“How Does She Know You Love Her?”

When you sit through the whole wonderful, hilarious movie with her on a Saturday night after she’s had a long day at the store, just ’cause she wants to, THAT’S how.

I love me some major dad.

Quote Of The Day

Gawd, I love that movie.

A Winter’s Lamb Roast

I lurves me some lamb, especially boneless leg of lamb.

And not that over cooked gray mint jelly mutton thing that 50s housewives felt required to fling at their families twice a year. No, we’re talking nice fresh carbon-excessive lamb from as far away as possible…Australia!

Once you cut off the netting these beauties open up nicely

so I butterflied it and

excuse me, you ate already

anyhow, it opened up rather nicely

so I seasoned the this side with a little salt, rosemary, dried mint, dried cilantro, pepper, cumin and the juice of 1 lime

you want this?

Really? This?

Well have it then!

Anyhoo, after seasoning roll that bad boy up

tie it

and then get it ready for the grill with a coating of salt, pepper and some more dried mint

and throw it on the grill for some indirect cooking over charcoal and a chunk of black birch. I pureed a small onion in the Cuisinart and made a mop of that and 1/2 cup lime juice, 1/4 cup white wine and 1/4 cup olive oil which I used to baste the lamb every 20 minutes or so. I figured it would take, er, well, that’s always the little hitch in my cooking: I never reaaaaaalllllly know how long stuff will take. That’s the downside of winging it. I let it cook for 30 minutes or so and then I got the roasted rosemary/thyme fingerling spuds ready

and while all of that was cooking I fired up the gas grill to bribe my gals with the Never Fail™ appetizer of grilled scallops and big honking shrimp that have been marinated in lime juice and curry

and as those were disappearing the lamb hit the temp I wanted

and turned out pretty darn yum

if you like these sorts of things, that is.

And I do.

Chuckle Of The Day

Well, ok, feel free to castigate me for finding this humorous, but one can not but laugh when confronted by the sheer absurdity of this

Duty’s attorneys argued that pentobarbital was risky and unsafe.

Ok, some guy was given a drug that his attorneys thought potentially harmful. Perhaps there is cause for concern. Was he ill? Was he sick?

Why yes, he was

(CNN) — An Oklahoma death row inmate received a drug commonly used to euthanize animals Thursday because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, the drug usually used as the sedative in its three-drug execution cocktail.

John David Duty was convicted and sentenced to die for strangling his 22-year-old cellmate, Curtis Wise, with shoe laces in 2001. At the time, he was serving three life sentences for rape, robbery and shooting with intent to kill from a 1978 conviction.

So, this guy was serving three life sentences for rape, robbery and shooting; he strangles his cellmate with shoelaces…and his attorneys are worried that the drug used to execute him might be…risky and unsafe?

Pentobarbital is used in a similar manner for animal euthanizations.

That sort of sums it up, doesn’t it?

Spam Of The Day

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I am a little concerned about the “shaft a scant fellow” bit.

Perhaps He’s An SEIU Employee?

Sitting There Calmly Took Enormous Guts

…but what old girl did? Wowsers.

…The 56-year-old slowly and deliberately raises the gun and levels it at Husfelt, who pleads “Please don’t, please don’t.” Duke then fires two shots that miss, followed by several others that didn’t hit the half-dozen or so people still left in the room.

Before he started shooting, member Ginger Littleton, who had left the room as ordered, sneaks up behind Duke as he stands next to the long, beige desk where the board was sitting and whacks him on the arm with her large, brown purse made of an alligator-like material.

“In my mind, that was the last attempt or opportunity to divert him,” she told The Associated Press.

Duke, a large, heavyset man, got angry, turned around, and she fell to the floor and board members pleaded with her to stop. Duke pointed the gun at her head and said, “You stupid b—-” but he didn’t shoot her, she said. She’s not sure why.

“He had every opportunity to take me out,” she said.

God bless ’em both. AMAZING individuals. AMAZING.

Asylum Horror

Via Tim, a Indonesian fishing boat over-filled with asylum-seeking Iraqis and Iranians lost power and smashed into the rocks on Christmas Island

A BOAT carrying asylum-seekers has smashed onto rocks in heavy seas at Christmas Island, with unconfirmed reports that many people have drowned.

Government sources told The Australian Online they believed about 70 people were aboard the boat and between 30 and 35 had been rescued, with the rest unaccounted for.

It is understood that most of those on board were Iranians and Iraqis.

The death toll is now pushing 50. More pictures here.

As with seemingly everything these days, there are strong political reverberations to this: under Howard and the Liberals, Australia turned away boats seeking asylum, which not surprisingly resulted in fewer and fewer making the attempt. Now, under the Labor governments of Rudd and Gillard, who have made it a specific point of their policy to accept these vessels, many more have made the attempt…and hundreds have drowned.

But Howard was the inhumane one.

A Light Dusting Of Gorebal Warmening This Morning

It was 19 F with a wind chill of 4.

Where’s the Promised Bounty Of Eternal Balmy Goodness we’ve been threatened promised?

I need to buy a bigger car, not For The Children but rather For The Wheat.

Jets Coach Channels Woody Hayes

What an ass.

Best comment on it so far:

“He should have tripped Sanchez coming out of the locker room.”

hehehe

If the “Proof” (and It Appears to Be About 80) Is IN the Pudding, Then It MUST Be Good

…’cause Martha looks PRET-tee happy at the sample table.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

The press conference on Friday where Obama handed the keys to Bill Clinton was, well, indescribable, really. I’ve never seen such a thing. Perhaps, as some think, he simply isn’t interested in the job of being President anymore; and frankly since he’s never had a job before in his entire life where he was held accountable for his actions (as opposed to being glorified for the simple fact of his existence) I can see where the past few months have been a bit of a…bummer…for him. Who knew the adoring crowds could be so fickle? Can’t a guy get some golf in and catch a show with his old lady? Geesh.

At a time when we desperately need a a firm hand on our tiller, one who can see beyond the tempests that daily afflict us to the port we are heading, someone who can graciously withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as but the expected travails of everyday life as a leader, no, we get the petulant man/child, anointed as World Savior before he’d done anything, a man who spent his first year in office traveling about the globe apologizing for the country he lead’s existence while at the same time working to put a gap between us and our traditional allies with his “smart diplomacy;” at home he and his Congressional allies have conspired to add more debt onto our backs than has ever been in the past, all the while whilst inflating the money supply recklessly and pushing through a whole range of legislative and regulatory creations that coalesce power to the federal government in a manner unprecedented in our history for “our good.”

Because us bitter clingy religion-types just don’t understand what’s good for us, do we? If only they’d explained it better, they lament, we’d have willingly held out our wrists and cheerfully accepted they shackles they required us to wear. If we don’t spend a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars, we were warned by our Betters, the unemployment would hit 9%, but their Really Smart Plan would keep it from exceeding even 8%. So they spent our Trillion…and the rate is now 9.8%. And their answer, as it always is, is never that they were wrong, that they made a mistake, no, no, none of that; that kind of stuff is for the other guy, the stupid simplistic one, the one who reads some old piece of paper like the Constitution and thinks those words actually mean something. No, their answer is they didn’t spend enough to “save” things.

Well, we do get it. You don’t need to “explain it better.” We understand what you want to do. And you’re wrong.

And last month we pushed back, and we will keep pushing back.

So have all the petulant little snits you want. Demean the office you hold all you want, because in fact you only succeed in making yourself smaller and smaller as that puffed-up empty suit you inhabit shrinks and deflates, revealing, well, none of us really knows what’s inside there, do we?

As someone famous once said “…those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that’s what part of the election in November was all about.”

Yes, indeed.

Look, Charles Is A Tool

But, seriously, WTF was his “security detail” thinking by having him and Camilla anywhere near these “students”?

LONDON – Furious student protesters attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, vandalized buildings and battled riot police Thursday as a controversial hike in university fees triggered Britain’s worst political violence in years.

In a major security breach, demonstrators set upon the heir to the throne’s Rolls Royce as it drove through London’s busy West End on its way to a theater. A group of up to 20 struck it with fists, sticks and bottles, breaking a window and splattering the gleaming black vehicle with paint.

In the frenzy, some chanted “off with their heads!”

Of course, I can’t help but remember that Chinese students protested for Freedom and Democracy in Tiananmen Square, put their bodies in front of moving tanks and thousands of them were slaughtered.

British students rise up and courageously protest…a fee raise? And they manage to throw some paint on a couple of namby-pambys in a Rolls?

What pathetic turds.

“24”

That was the temperature this morning, not the show.

Some Amazing Photos

Via our buddy Jim, here are some amazing photos of the War in the Pacific. The first couple I’d seen before, but not the rest.

A Quick Wednesday Meal

So my Bride and Daughter had things to do this evening and left me home. Never a good idea, especially when I’m hungry. As I poured myself a glass or three of wine I thought hmm, what to concoct?

I had Brussels sprouts, but I really wasn’t in the mood for some bitter steamed thing.

But I had butter.

And I had bacon….so I figured let’s have a Brussels sauté!

First I cut the ends off about 3/4 of a pound of Brussels sprouts and sliced them in half

and plopped them in a nice sizzling pan with 2 tbl unsalted butter

and let them sizzleate over medium/high heat for 4-5 minutes. Whilst they were caramelizing I opened and rinsed a can of ‘shrooms

which I can only do when the Girls are not around because those beloved heathens don’t like them

shit I need another 2 tbl butter

ah good

now add the can of mushrooms plus a very generous heap of minced garlic and some fresh ground pepper and some salt

stir and let that sizzle for a minute or two and then add oh say 3/4 cup crumbled bacon

and let that cook for another 5 minutes or so, so you can render out some of the tasty bacon divinity flavor

then add 1 cup of vegetable stock and a sprig of fresh rosemary

and bump up the heat a touch while stirring fairly frequently to reduce and concentrate the flavors. Let the volume of liquid reduce by half and then serve

and you will get two bowl fulls of concentrated buttery bacony brussely goodness that is just…well, mighty yum. The ‘sprouts were perfect, with not the slightest trace of that yucky bitter steamed-to-death essence that rightly turns folks away.

And if you follow it with a mighty fine caipirinha

well, Sir, a man ought to count himself mighty lucky to be in such a situation.

Mighty lucky indeed.

And NOW

I’m PISSED at the Post Office, too.

One package for Ebola, to head WEST for 120 miles, to Keesler AFB (Biloxi, just outside little red circle, far left side of map). Lots of USPS trucks heading from here ( BIG RED CIRCLE ) to New Orleans EVERY F*CKING DAY, so just kick it off somewhere around the 110 exit from I-10 and it’ll roll to his barracks door, right? major dad hands it over Monday and I look up the tracking number this morning, so I can alert young spawn to go snatch it up, conceivably this afternoon. 120 miles, right? Trucks go that way EVERY F*CKING DAY, right? Well. Not my day.

Appears said parcel is in Jacksonville F*cking Florida, THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTYMILES EAST of here: FAR RIGHT SIDE of map. Won’t be delivered until about the 11th. That’s Saturday. So Ebola won’t get it until probably Tuesday of NEXT week.

To summarize.

After it’s run the roads the BREADTH of the F*CKING PANHANDLE for OVER A F*CKING WEEK and TRAVELED ALMOST NINE HUNDRED F*CKING MILES package will arrive for final delivery to a place two and a half hours away, in the exact. Opposite. Direction.

Carbon footprint that one.

UPDATE: Alert the media. It’s headed back this a way:

Label/Receipt Number: 0307 1790 0002 1241 4223
Expected Delivery Date: December 11, 2010
Class: Package Services
Service(s): Delivery Confirmation™
Status: Processed through Sort Facility

Your item was processed through and left our JACKSONVILLE, FL 32099 facility on December 07, 2010. The item is currently in transit to the destination. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.

Feel free to “Where’s Waldo” Ebola’s lost and lonely Air Force package your ownself if you’re bored (all except YOU, Rob) ~ it’s your tax dollars and I don’t mind. Tracking numbers in bold above.

UPDATE REDUX: Thanks to the intrepid David Crawford, we know Percival the Parcel’s last whereabouts to be…wait for it…you’ll never guess…MEMPHIS, TN!!! (Well, DUH! Where else, right?)

Detailed Results:

Processed through Sort Facility, December 08, 2010, 2:42 pm, MEMPHIS, TN 38136
Processed through Sort Facility, December 07, 2010, 10:20 am, JACKSONVILLE, FL 32099
Acceptance, December 06, 2010, 12:34 pm, PENSACOLA, FL 32508

David was also thoughtful enough to calculate that the mileage at this stage of the journey, should it end, stands at 1423 miles. BUT.

As events have so far proven, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Wonder where the little bugger’s off to next, courtesy of Uncle Sam?