Sunday, January 18, 2009

An Improvised Recipe

When I was a kid, I used to really like poached eggs served on toast. It was always so wonderful to cut into the egg and have the liquid yolk burst out and soak a butter slathered piece of toasted bread.

Then, in college, I discovered Eggs Benedict, complete with spring asparagus shoots and Canadian bacon. Hollandaise sauce became a mead of sorts.

After college, that KIPLog guy, who happens to be a chef trained food dude taught me one Easter how to actually make a Hollandaise sauce. The experiment failed, but I at least learned the fundamentals.

Since then, I've availed myself of using store-bought Hollandaise mix-kits whenever I've had a Hollandaise hankerin'. Sure, it's not as luscious as the real thing (but I still use Hellmann's when I want to mayo-up a sandwich because I, as a cook, to quote the outgoing President, have misunderestimated the fine art of emulsion.

Short story getting longer, make an occasional Eggs benedict for Mouse and I on some certain Sundays (or an off-chance Saturday). Ursa Minor still doesn't appreciate the wonder of liquid egg yolk as of yet, so he has yet to partake in the glory of it.

Today, though, I made something new.

Ingredients:

6 patties of Mr Dee's Hash Brown Potato Patties

One can of Spam

Two packets of Knorr Hollandaise sauce (and whatever it says on the pouch to add)

6 eggs.

First step: Begin preparing the Hollandaise sauce per the directions, adding a bit more butter if you would like.

Second step: Begin to brown the hash brown patties in one pan and slices of Spam in another pan.

Third step: Set a pot of water on to boil so as to poach some eggs.

Fourth step: Once the hash brown patties and the spam are adequately browned and the Hollandaise sauce is nicely thickened and the egg-poaching water is at a roiling boil, begin to poach eggs.

The set-up for this dish is relatively simple:

A slab of hash browns, fully browned, goes on the plate. On top of that, a slice or two of the sizzling Spam. Next, ladle on a jiggling poached egg. Then pour on a ladle or so of the Hollandaise.

Voila.

A heart-attack just waiting to happen.

Bon Appetite-o.
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Vacation...

Summer's a long time away. Sure, we had a thaw, but this winter's only just begun. And what better time than the bitter cold of winter to prepare for the days of summer?

In other words, it's my turn to choose where Mouse and I will go for vacation this summer.

I took a look at a map of the 48 states and thought long an hard on this one. I went for a warm weather clime.

Austin, TX it will be.

Any suggestions are warmly welcomed.
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Year, People...

It's a tradition, don't'cha know.

Mouse and I play a game or two of Scrabble with Mouse's mother on New Year's Eve.

Tonight we did so again.

Now that Ursa Minor is getting older, he gets to spend some time bringing himself into the tradition. Tonight, before he went to bed, we played a couple rounds of Apples to Apples, a game he got as a Christmas Present.

It's a fun game. We played a few rounds with just the three of us on the day after Christmas, and now that we played it again on New Year's Eve, I think that it's a much better game with more players.

I h'ain't got much to say about the pre-NY Evening except that I really like the tradition that we've started by spending the Eve with Mouse's mom playing Scrabble and other games.

It's special to spend set-aside time with family. And Mouse's ma is a treasure.
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Daze Off...

I have yesterday and the next few days until the New Year off of work so as to be home with Ursa Minor during his Christmas Vacation.

He's got so many new things.

I spent some time putting stuff together. And unpackaging other stuff. And then we watched some School House Rock!




Wow.

I had thought that this would be fun for him, and a blast from my past bit of enjoyment for myself.

He really digs them. And me, I probably only remember a smidgeon of them.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008

The Catastrophes Don't End, Do They?

It's not like I didn't wake up early this morning to check the basement to see if it wasn't continuing to flood.

Yesterday was crap-tastic.

I took the family out to eat for breakfast to try to spin some good for the day bright and early.

And then...

Noon Game.

Bears. EmBearrassed by the Texans. If Da Bears would have won the game, they'd've gone to the playoffs. Not that they deserved to, but they woulda been there.

And then what happens after that?

I had mistakenly thought that the Cowboys were already out of playoff contention (see how closely *I* follow the NFL?). But my guys still had a chance today. And what did I end up seeing? Oh, I saw Tony Romo crying. His face buried in the football field.

Cubs and Cowboys both start with the letter "C."

I guess I should console myself with the fact that at least the Cubs made it to the playoffs.
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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Good weather gone bad.

It's been a pretty snow/ice filled winter so far.

Until this morning.

Appears a warm-up trundled through. And a ton of rain. And with today's temperatures forecast into the low fifties Mouse and I were thinking we could spend a bit of time outside enjoying the tropical heatwave.

We ended up being wrong. When I walked into the basement this morning I stepped into a wet patch in the carpet at the bottom of the stairs. I asked Mouse about it. She had assumed that one of the girls had peed, and Mouse had cleaned up behind the offender.

Turns out it wasn't quite that simple.

Just before Mouse and I were going to head out to do some sitting outside, I went into the laundry room/unfinished portion of the basement. Water was pooled on the floor, trying to reach a drain that had been sealed shut.

Crap-ola.

Long story (not so) short...

I sopped up what was in the uncarpeted laundry room with cloths, wringing them into a bucket, not knowing where the water was coming from, but hoping for the best. We decided to cut up the portion of carpet at the base of the stairs, conceding that it was probably a lost cause.

When I saw the water begin to again pool where we had cleaned, I decided to look into the crawlspace.

Bad buzz.

Water in the crawlspace over my second knuckle.

I scooped for a little bit with a cup and a bucket, hoping to bail it out. Eventually we borrowed a 10 gallon shop vac from the next-door neighbors. We poured copious gallons of water into the sump pump hole. It was an all day and arduous adventure, and Mouse and I make a great team (and Ursa Minor was wonderfully understanding being cloistered in his room for most of the day).
When the majority of the day was pretty much shot, we returned the shop vac and hoped for the best.

The water seepage into our living space seemed to have subsided.

I always knew that Mouse and I work well together. This day further cemented that fact in my mind. She's incredible. Truly.
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Friday, December 26, 2008

Hooray!

Mouse fixed the DVD/tv connection by *reading the instruction handbook*!

Can you believe it? All we needed was some RF Modulator thingie. No need for anything else, and the player works with perfect clarity.

Mouse is a thinker. Mouse rocks.
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Thursday, December 25, 2008

21st Century Finally Arrives...

I knew it was coming. It had to.

We've got a DVD player.

Christmas day was wonderful. Ursa Minor woke us up and we went downstairs and enjoyed the bounty that we (and Santa) were blessed to bestow upon him. It was a wonderful morning. And then Mouse and I finished prepping for having the families over.

Mouse is so very wonderful. Every year she quietly leaves the festivities at one point for a few moments and goes out into darkened evening and wanders to the front of the house. Her soul purpose for this is to look back into the front windows at the gathering of her happy family.

She's really an angel.

It took some doing, and I'm not sure it's going to work, but my brother and my father finagled the DVD player into some modicum of submission with our tv. The picture is sketchy, but hopefully we'll be able to resolve the resolution with only a modicum of expense.

And, as a post script, Mouse's brother gave her a wonderful mix CDs compilation. We sat and rocked on the glider/couch and listened to it after the guests had gone and Ursa Minor had gone to sleep.
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Here Comes Santa Claus...

Got home from work tonight and remembered, this year, to show Ursa Minor the Norad Santa Tracking website.

He'd been pretty tame for most of the day, but looking through the website put him into a total Santa overdrive.

He wrote another note to Santa, and we set it out with the milk, cookies and oats. He and Mouse arranged the manger beneath the tree. And just before bedtime we all sat on the glider/couch and read "The NutCracker" and "‘Twas the Night before Christmas" out loud.

Silent Night. Holy Night.

I'm not a very religion man. Rumor has it, though, that Santa is bringing Ursa Minor a couple of children's Bibles to peruse. I'm sure in the rush of all of the other presents the books will fall by the temporary wayside. I've only been in a church twice in the past two years, and those times were for the memorial services of my two remaining grandparents.

I miss them
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Saturday, December 13, 2008

Some kinda hair day...

The Christmas season keeps on keepin' on.

Mouse and I have been watching a number of the Christmas specials on tv with Ursa Minor.

In general, we don't watch much tv most of the time.

The latest holiday foray of tv, however, has included watching some of the classic Rankin and Bass episodes from our own childhoods. Mouse mentioned (under her breath, so as not to disturb Ursa Minor's enjoyment how different these shows were now that we were seeing them as adults. I more than agreed.

And then there was A Miser Brothers Christmas. It's something new that ABC has but out. There were a number of one-liners that were quite fun.

One thing I kept thinking, though, was that Heat Miser's hair...





reminded me of my own hair



(though my latest haircut and non-dye-job slightly belies this truth).
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