An external consultant finally figured out why attendance at the Mall’s Easter display was down for the third year in a row. You guessed it – stale Peeps.
Do You Kids Remember the GoonBlog?
It’s Friday, Janet and I actually have plans that involve other human beings our age who aren’t also related to us, and life is generally good. To top things off, I finished an article last night that left me feeling as though I’d just enjoyed the benefits of 17 consecutive Metamucil milkshakes. To put it a different way, I finished an article for a client that nearly killed me. But it’s done, it’s good, and I want to share.
The article version is up on GoonBlog.com – you remember the GB, right? It’s the hockey blog I maintain with my old friends from Concord – Killer and Detroit Velvet Smooth. If you’d like to see a top 10 list of the best NCAA Buzzer Beaters from the last sixty some odd years, have a look. Tis the season to go to a sports bar, eat two pounds of wings, order a bucket of Budweisers and get yourself thrown out for yelling obsceneties at people in the establishment who are rooting for Duke, after all.
If you use Digg, Stumble Upon, Mixx, Propeller or any of the other myriad of social media and voting sites – please give the article some love. You can even quickly send it out as a MySpace bulletin or Facebook post as I have added links to both options as a drop down at the end of the article. Bless your hearts and may the Easter Bunny bring you several Cadbury Cream Eggs – of which I know I’m not the only fan. I may, however, be the only fan who likes to crack them open with his mouth and then let the sugary schmeg drip down his chin and onto his chest. Inside voice, Dave.
Friday’s Quizzlet: In Praise of Wiig
Appetizer: Given the choice, would you prefer to live in the country or in the city?
The country, as long as there is a city within reasonable driving distance. Here in the sleepy town of Portland I have Ottawa an hour and fifteen minutes to the West and Kingston forty-five minutes to the East. South I have the Big Rideau. North I have Yeti and Sasquatch. As I eluded – I like a mix.
Soup: Who is the cutest kid you know?
I can’t possibly answer this question in public. I know many of cute kids and many of their parents read this blog. Some of them are even related to me. I’ve been looking for an excuse to make a very important announcement, so I guess this is the best chance I’m gonna get. Pay attention: Christopher Walken is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxgkTvZonrE[/youtube]
Only Alec Baldwin is as consistently excellent a guest host. Oh wait, I just checked NBC.com and they’re re-running the Tina Fey episode from last month. Damn – must have been a last minute pull out like when Janet Jackson was replaced by Mariah last week. I’ve been watching all of the current season, as I always do, and let me tell you something. Remember you heard it here first, kids – SNL is funny again. Samberg, Hader and especially Kristen Wiig are pulling the show from the jaws of death. Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen have done their parts too. Last week’s episode which starred Jonah Hill was basically the Kristen Wiig show. She carried no less than 3 solid skits all by herself. In only 2.5 years she has established more recurring characters than most cast members ever manage. My favorite being the Target Lady which you can see above. If I hear one more person say “Well, I hear SNL isn’t funny anymore” who can not go on to name even one of the newer cast members… I will summarily beat them to death with a land shark.
Salad: Fill in the blank: I couldn’t believe it when I heard ___________.
DMX didn’t know who Barack Obama is.
Main Course: If you could star in a commercial for one of your favorite products, which one would you want to advertise?
I gave it some air time in my Greek recipe segment from earlier this week, but I’ve got to give some more props to my T-Fal indoor grill. That’s what I call it anyway. Officially it is known as the Excelio Comfort, and I’m a big fan. I decided to buy it because everytime we want to grill something on the BBQ my father gets involved and it turns into a mess. It’s one of his dementia-related fixations. As you can imagine, we don’t want him playing with fire. This way, we can grill things quietly in the kitchen and he never has to take his eyes off The Quiet Man.
Dessert: What type of vitamins or supplements do you take on a regular basis?
I take Emergen-C every morning. I currently have a box of orange and a box of tangerine which Lauren was nice enough to send me up from Boston for my birthday. It’s the Mom in her, no doubt. It’s tasty, delightfully sparkly and contains all kinds of things I’m not getting from poutine. The first person to ever give me E-C to try was my friend Bridget way back in 1999. You probably remember her as the alarmed and beautiful nutritionist in Super Size Me. What better a person to make the introduction. Although back then I think she was far more concerned about my McBeer intake then anything else.
Wednesday Wadio: Big Dipper’s “Faith Healer”
About 5 years ago, WFNX polled the city of Boston and asked them what their favorite home cooked Beantown rock song was. Now that is a tough question (italics used for dramatic effect), but the people rose to the occasion and voted “All Going Out Together” by Big Dipper as their undisputed #1. Think about that for a second, because Boston’s bred indy bands like the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Mission of Burma, etc. and being chosen as the top song EVAH is testament to the band’s legacy within the town of beans. My friends and I have been listening to the Dipper since high school, we know some of them personally and one of us is even acting as a roadie at their reunion show at the Middle East on April 26th. I’m playing with the idea of flying down for this as I’d most certainly be backstage and most certainly be the happiest kid on the planet and possibly even the Milky Way.
I’ve seen a lot of bands play at the Middle East over the years – Breeders, The The, Jonathan Richman, Grooveasaurus, Gord Downie, Luna – and it’s a wonderful location to see a show. It was an even better location when my friend Adam worked the bar there and used to slide me Harpoons and get me gooned just for showing up. My point is, what a great choice for the Big Dipper Reunion. I like the Paradise and everything, where it was first rumored to be happening, but my preference is that slice of Heaven in Central Square. And not (there’s that emphasis again) spending an hour on the Green Line to the wilderness of BU and Comm Ave.
There’s a band of questionable repute called Built to Spill who released a popular song called “Big Dipper” a few years back, and boy do I ever wish they’d chosen a different name for the tune. It’s all you ever see online when running searches for my beloved Boston band. I did manage to find one proper video, for “Faith Healer“, and two live clips from a show at the Ritz in New York City circa 1987 – “Younger Bums” and “Lunar Module” which are both off the same album as “All Going Out…” so we’ll go with those.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS3WsiNCBpY&feature=related[/youtube]
If you remotely enjoyed the video then check out the MP3 for the vastly superior ditty She’s Fetching (hosted by Merge Records and fully downloadable by right-clicking) which is definitely in my Dipper top 3. She’s also got the skankiest little guitar riff you’ve ever heard. “Fetching” is still part of my vocabulary today as a direct result of listening to this song on the Sony Sport boombox I had plugged into the cigarette lighter in my ’78 Chevy Malibu station wagon driving around Concord at 16 years of age. Blaupunkt eat your heart out.
Their catalog has been unreleased and heavily sought after for years, but Heavens, Boo Boo, Craps and are finally being re-released. They are also heavily promoting the 48 track greatest hits/anthology, Supercluster, via a MySpace profile and other online viral means. I was happy to see my very favorite Dipper song, Ron Klaus Wrecked his House, available to add to your profile and I have just done so. Click here to grab Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology from Amazon.
I have also uploaded the MP3 to my server as a special gift for you today – and I implore you to download it and see what you think. It’s a great song with gritty indy guitars, crashing drums, a complex baseline and a vocal harmony which is probably still hurts Gary Waleik’s throat 20 years on. If the style and theme of this song doesn’t remind you of college while also impressing you with its catchiness, then you probably never went to college. Or graduated high school, for that matter. For the love of God and all that is holy, listen to your old pal Dave, get your GED and do yourself a favor: Ron Klaus Wrecked his House. Glad to have you back, boys.
Tuesday Tasties: Dave’s Greek Extravaganza
As we divvy up duties around the house, I’ve offered to retain my summer Tuesday slot for cooking dinner. One night a week isn’t going to get me past St. Peter, but Janet enjoys cooking immensely and my mother can pick up the slack one or two nights a week. Plus, if I’m only assigned the one night I’m far less likely to simply throw frozen Pogos in the oven. I might actually try do do something special for my brood.
Why not make it a regular feature here on PITF, methinks? I’m not afraid to cook, which I believe is the first big step. Once you get over a general fear of fire or belief that you’re just incapable – it’s really very fun. It doesn’t always turn out as you’d hoped, but several summers of my youth spent working in kitchens has left me fearless and in possession of a reasonable skill base – so I’m going to have a good time with it, make the family happy and expand my limited repertoire at the same time. That’s how it reads on paper, anyway.
I’ll get an idea, I’ll search for the easiest best recipe I can find online and then I’ll just feckin’ give ‘er. Kind of like Jamie Oliver without all of the positive outlook on life.
As I venture into this new hobby-realm-pursuit, I’ll bring you right along with me via recipes I use, photos and maybe even the odd video. We’re debuting with a Greek Extravaganza because I just peeked inside the fridge and there’s a whack of lambchops thawed and ready to roll. I also noticed a tub of Costco feta and even a big tub of Tzatziki hanging around in there. I will be attempting the following:
The recipes I’m using are linked above if applicable, and I’ll be back to update you on the carnage later this evening. I have to marinate the chops for two hours so I’d best get a move on as it’s 4:30 and I don’t want any TV remotes thrown at my head this evening.
It’s now 9:30 in the pm and I’m happy to report that the meal went very well. Comments included “Wow, I’m impressed,” and even “This lamb is cooked perfectly“. For the loin chops I diced garlic and threw it in a big bowl with red wine, balsamic, olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano, tossed the chops and then put them and the rest of the tasty sludge into a Ziploc and they then marinated in the fridge for 3 hours. My handy T-Fal indoor grill was red hot when I threw them on, 5 minutes a side, and then flashed them in the oven for 2 minutes so that the feta cheese and diced Kalamaata I added after the second grill flip would melt and bind to the top.
The roast potatoes were sliced lengthwise into quarters, tossed in a mixture of lemon juice, salt, pepper olive oil, oregano and water before being baked for an hour on a deep broiler pan. 480 until the water boiled and then down to 350 for the rest of the time. They were tender and tasted almost exactly like the roast spuds you get at Greek restaurants. Tasty, buddy.
The salad was… a Greek salad. It was quite green. Nothing startling to report there. To round out the culinary delight about to befall my family I grilled a piece of flatbread in garlic butter, sliced it into narrow triangles and placed three on each plate with a nice dollop of store bought Tzatziki on top. The final ensemble looked something like this…
Highlights
- When the smoke cleared, it was a very tasty dish, reasonably authentic with fresh ingredients and it pleased the crowd.
- The indoor grill continues to amaze me. It also has a griddle plate you can swap out which makes great grilled cheese and pancakes. Albeit rarely together.
- Greek food isn’t as hard to prepare as I thought it was. Lamb is a drop in the bucket, but that fear wall has been broken down and I’ll now be able to tackle something really tricky, like Mousakka.
- Because I needed red wine for the marinade it gave me an excuse to open some on a Tuesday night.
Lowlights
- From prep to cooking to cleanup this project took me over 3 hours. That’s three hours for a meal that was finished in about 20 minutes. Yes, I enjoyed it but I certainly wouldn’t want to do this more than once a week.
- The potatoes weren’t overcooked but stuck to the bottom of the pan and had to be carefully removed to keep them intact. I should have turned them more often.
- The little lamb loinlet thingys were very small and I’d like to try this with a proper chop next time around.
The mouthwatering lambchop photos are up for all to see, and again the recipes are linked further up the page. If you’ve ever tried to prepare this, or a similar, tasty treat please leave any additions or advice in the comments. And if you’ll excuse me I’m sure there are still 15 plates left to clean somewhere in this house.