And Other Bad Words
Kent: You’re all just a bunch of degenerates!
Chris Knight: We are? What about that time I found you naked with that bowl of Jello?
Kent: You did not!
Chris Knight: This is true.
Kent: I was hot and I was hungry.
The real genius of this movie was the dialog. It’s so ridiculous that it almost sounds true.
We’re just over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Most years past we would simply go to Meghan’s mother’s house, and she would put on a traditional dinner: boiled corned beef, boiled potatoes, and boiled cabbage.
Last year we ate a sad dinner on our own, as I had never made corned beef and cabbage before. I tried it in the slow cooker. It didn’t turn out very well. Lesson learned.
Due to the wonders of science and concentrated efforts, the world has vaccines in record time and we see the light at the end of the figurative tunnel. My mother-in-law has been vaccinated and graciously agreed to come to our house. And I’m taking another stab at making traditional Irish-American dinner.
Taken from How To Make Corned Beef:
Stovetop method: For a 5 pound brined corned beef brisket. Place the corned beef in a Dutch oven. Sprinkle with one tablespoon of pickling spice blend and pour in 4 cups beef broth. Add potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. Bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce heat, cover and cook for about 3 1/2 hours. Add water if necessary to keep brisket covered. Slice across the grain.
I don’t mind saying, it was delicious. But it might have been a side-effect of having company for the first time in a very, very long time.
We made two exceptions from tradition: I added garlic mashed potatoes, and we didn’t have Irish coffee after dinner.
This recipe was an instant hit. I have to make a double batch if I want leftovers for the next day.
Adapted from therecipecritic.com
When I was a kid I disliked soups and stews, and hated even the idea of lentil soup. (which, as a child, I somehow equated with Barbara Streisand – probably due to the publicity of her movie Yentl.) Fortunately I became more open-minded as an adult, and found that I absolutely love lentil soup. It’s very healthy for you, to boot.
The red lentils in this recipe break down and make a very creamy soup. Green and brown lentils may be substituted, but black lentils don’t work out well.
You can try other vegetables as substitutes or additions, including sweet potatoes, butternut squash, mushrooms, celery, or whatever you have on hand.
Adapted from The Absolute Best Lentil Soup.
So little Jimmy walks past the general store where the old fellas sit out front. He’s carrying a bag of something. Stan, the youngest of the old guys, calls over to him, “Whatchya got there?”
“Duck tape! I’m gonna find some ducks!” Jimmy yells back. “I don’t think it works that way,” Stan says. Jimmy keeps on walking.
A few hours later Jimmy comes walking back the other way with a brace of ducks in his hand. The old guys at the store are suitably impressed.
A couple of days later, Jimmy walks by with bundle of something under his arm. Stan accosts him again, “Whataya have today, Jimmy?”
“Dog wood. I’m looking for a new dog.” “I don’t think it works that way,” Stan says. Jimmy keeps on walking.
Before the sun gets low in the sky, Jimmy comes striding back towards home, holding a puppy at the end of a leash. A low whistle emanates from the group of fellas.
A day after that, Jimmy is on his way by again, a rod of something in his hand. Stan gives him the side-eye, and suspiciously asks, “whatchya got today, Jimmy?”
“I got some pussy willow.”
“Hold on,” Stan says to Jimmy, “let me get my hat.”
This is our family dog. She is waiting for me to take her for a our regular after-dinner walk.
I am changing her name from “Butter” to “Aka Lana Lana” (“Hopeful Shadow” in Hawaiian) as she closely follows me around the house from the moment we finish dinner until I actually take her for a walk.
Last night, Beta spent half an hour out on the deck. She was wearing the wool cape I got her last Christmas. She had her new noise-cancelling headphones that block so many of the sounds that bother her. She used the new family telescope to check out the Pleiades.
That was pretty awesome.
I’m copying and posting this here to remind myself, from time to time, of the message.
Well hey, here’s a valuable piece of information for you.
Most things, fairly universally, you’re wrong about. Yes, it’s true. Most of the things which you believe you’re right about – you are in fact wrong about. To some degree, either by having an incomplete picture of facts but believing you’ve got a complete one, or holding differing viewpoints and not being aware of it, or making a judgement on an incorrect assumption or even bad information you’ve received…
It’s just that most of the time the amount of your inaccuracy doesn’t matter. But accepting that fact is important because it allows room for you to accept errors in your thinking on important issues.
You’re not infallible, you’re not so great, you don’t know much. But that’s OK. Because none of us are infallible, none of us are that great, none of us know all that much.
But if you’re humble enough – you’ll keep learning. Slowly decreasing the margin of our error is all we can hope to do. If you believe you’ve fully closed it…that it’s reached 0, that you’ve finally got it all figured out and there is no more error…well then you’re just flying blind now. It may take a while, but you’ll eventually crash – as any pilot with closed eyes eventually does.
Bricka_Bracka via Reddit
I am shocked, shocked I tell you! that my children actually enjoyed this recipe. I’m not sure why, perhaps they have given up all hope of enjoying a decent meal from my kitchen and now sullenly submit to my demands that they eat the goddamn food that I paid for and worked hard to put in front of them and it’s not like you do any chores around… Ahem. I got a little off track here.
Whatever the reason, they ate this one on my first attempt.
These are basically middle-eastern meatballs. You can cut in other things with the meat, serve them in a variety of ways, whatever floats your boat. (I rather enjoyed wrapping them in some naan with rice.) It’s a meatball. It’s the spices that make it.
The oven instructions are below. We haven’t grilled them yet, but they should do great, just use a little grill-sense. It’s a reasonably easy and fast recipe, ~20 minutes to prep and ~20 minutes to cook.
The recipe plus rice and other sides makes enough for 6-8 people.
If you plan on skewering the meat, and you’re using bamboo or wood skewers, soak them in water for ~30 mins.
Usual disclaimer with ground meat dishes: make sure the internal temp is at least 160° before serving.
Serve with some traditional middle-eastern sides, like:
Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
“Conan the Barbarian” in the novel Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard