Mega H/T to Robert over at BlackFork for this one!  Enjoy!

LabRat has a wonderful post about how the parts of the chicken that most people don’t want to eat, the skin, bones, and thigh meat, make the best food.

I couldn’t agree more.  The best food in our collective menu here in the U.S., such as chili, barbecue, chicken soup, are best made with the lowest cuts of meat.  What all of these have in common is that they started out as the food that poorer members of society made, and they are all cooked slowly.

A lot of people I know are hooked on food that is either processed until it’s no longer directly related to its base ingredients, restaurant carryout or fast food, or things that can be whipped up in a few minutes.  Of the three, the last tastes the best, but foods that cook quickly tend to dry out unless loaded down with added fats or heavy sauces.

That’s one of the reasons I love my crockpot.  I can take inexpensive meat, spices, and liquid and make a delicious, nutritious, moist meal while I’m at work.  The best food is cooked slow.

• Take picked over chicken, turkey, duck, or whatever-poultry-hits-the-pot bones and spiced water, simmer for 8 hours in a crock pot, add some vegetables and you’ve got the best soup you’ve ever had.
• Take some hamburger made from the least edible parts of the cow the government will allow on the market, add some spices, chilis, tomatoes, and beans (yes, I know, this is a religious statement), leave in the crockpot for a day, and you’ve got chili
• Take the above, leave out the beans and change some of your spice combination, and you’ve got the best spaghetti sauce you’ve ever had.
• Take the cheap parts of a cow or a pig, soak in a brine for a day or so, rub with a collection of your favorite spices, then smoke them for-freaking-ever with hardwood and your favorite honey, mustard, or tomato based sauce and you’ve got the food of the gods.
• Put an inexpensive beef or pork roast in a crockpot with carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes, add some liquid, and your dinner is waiting for when you get home.

All of this food is the same kind of cuisine your grandmothers made way back when.  Labor saving devices like ready made food, microwaves, and steamer bags are a heck of a lot more work than chopping up your favorite ingredients, throwing them in a pot with a bay leaf and some salt, and letting them simmer all day long while you do something else.

Many thanks to LabRat, Stingray, and everyone else who posts recipes for making good food on their sites!

If you normally drink at most two beers a week, drinking three glasses of good wine with dinner and two glasses of limoncello with dessert is probably not a smart idea.  Damn, I’m a lightweight.  Where’s the Tylenol?

It was the proudest moment of my life, second only to the birth of one of my twins – Adam Corolla, In Fifty Years, We’ll All Be Chicks

I’m about halfway through this book of giggles and snorts, and I’ll be doing a full review when I’m done.

One warning – If you’re not offended by at least one thing in this book, read it again.  You missed something.

OK, if you’re doing the horizontal mambo with a lady and you don’t realize she’s dead, you’re doing it wrong.

One of three things is going on here:

1. This guy is a sick bastard who shouldn’t be allowed out among normal people.
2. This guy doesn’t know that your partner should at least occasionally move, make noise, or at least breathe.
3. This guys was too drunk/stoned/stupid to tell the difference between a living breathing woman and a corpse.

Good gravy, I hope this bluntskull hasn’t procreated.

If putting crosshairs over states on a poster promotes political violence, then this story can be used to accuse Ted Turner of promoting harm to children with his “24 Hours of Christmas Story“.

Firefighters poured water over his tongue to help free the boy. Apparently, the boy had risen to the challenge from his older brother while they were waiting for the school bus.

OK, Sherman, set the wayback machine to North Hill Elementary in Minot North Dakota, any school day in January, 1978.  At any given moment during recess, there was a kid with a tongue stuck to the metal piping that made up the swingset, the monkey bars, or the merry-go-round.  Minot got  brass monkey cold that winter, and we pretty much used the opportunity to prove we were tougher than the other members of our Lord of the Flies society.  Such challenges as walking barefoot across the playground, giving your coat to the fastest kid in class and chasing him to get it back, or sticking your tongue to exposed metal were common.  Of course, touching a wet tongue to bare metal in -20F weather instantly seals the mouth to the monkey bars.  Normal children would take off their mittens and use their fingers to slowly melt/pry their tongues loose.  Of course, real men, also known as dumbasses, would just tear their head loose.  Yeah, you’d bleed like a stuck pig, but for the rest of recess, you’d be The Man.

Needless to say, a DNA sample of the tissue frozen to these metal bars would show that a young Norwegian kid who would grow up to be DaddyBear was The Man more often than most.  Additionally, I walked barefoot through the snow often enough that whenever it gets well and truly cold my feet instantly go numb.  I never said I was smart. 

Remember of course, that Christmas Story didn’t come out until 1983.  Children, especially boys, will do stupid crap no matter what.  It’s part of growing up.  I’m sure that in Kenya there are groups of boys right now playing “Rochambeau the Lion”.  Kids in India must have something close to “Smack the Cobra”.   Those who survive make the species stronger.

Ted Williams, the homeless man who has become a semi-sensation after a reporter recorded him using his ‘radio voice’, has decided to enter rehab for alcohol and drugs. 

Good for him.

From some of the articles I’ve read about him and the family he left behind for his life as a drug and alcohol addict, he needs it.  Hopefully he will be able to find ways to deal with both his addiction and his reasons for turning to drugs and alcohol in the first place.

I’ve seen a lot of people, both in my personal life and in the news, who have gone into treatment after being caught out of bounds while under the influence.  It is exceedingly rare for someone to seek out treatment when things are going as well as they are for Mr. Williams.  Yes, his adult life up this point has been a trainwreck, but if he takes the assistance that is being offered and stays clean, he may be able to make a better life for himself and possibly help others.

Good luck to him.

Going to bed with a slight tension headache, waking up with a bad tension headache, and having a full blown, lay-down-before-you-fall-down headache by the time you’re out of the shower does not tend to make a good Wednesday.

I’m just now starting to feel human again.  How people who have migraines all the time stay functional is beyond me.  Thank the Lord for aspirin, caffeine, and rest.

One of our Kentucky legislators has apparently run out of things to do.  She wants parents whose children will be visiting the Capitol Building on school trips to sign slips acknowledging that there may be guns there.  She’s worried that a shooting like the one in Tucson may happen around all of the politicians in Frankfort, and she wants parents to worry even more about their children.

I’ve got news for Representative Marzian:  Children from Kentucky are in places that have guns in them all the time.  Every time they see a police officer, he has a gun.  Every time they go to the mall, there are CCW holders or open carriers there too.  I’d bet that everywhere in the Commonwealth that isn’t specifically spelled out in law as being off limits to firearms has someone, sometime, carrying a gun in it.

Here’s a clue:  All of the children at the mall in Louisville, specifically the Apple Store, The Disney Store, Dicks Sporting Goods, and Panera Bread, last Friday afternoon were around a a gun.  At least one of the people carrying a gun made goo-goo eyes at a cute baby, chatted with a store clerk about the Toy Story franchise, and looked at workout clothes without negatively impacting the little children.  That evil revolver just sat in its holster and didn’t jump out and run amuck, and neither did the gun’s owner.

So before Representative Marzian tries to freak out the sheep in Kentucky, she should apply just a tad of common sense.  Children are safely exposed to guns, both concealed and openly carried, every day and their little psyches aren’t bruised.  And all of those people carrying guns seem to have acted like grown-ups up until now.  Don’t add one more reason for non-gun people to fear hand-crafted lumps of metal.

Well, they called school in Louisville three hours prior to the first snowflake falling, but we got about 3 inches of snow this morning.  Guess I’ll give the school administration a pass on this one.

I’ve been indulging Girlie Bear and BooBoo with movies and TV today.  Girlie Bear did have some homework, so she’s doing that now that Boo’s down for his nap.  Guess I’m not indulgoDad after all.

I’ve spent the morning drafting a PERL script over our VPN in vi.  Haven’t done that in a while.  I didn’t realize how spoiled I’ve become with graphical editors.

The wind is picking up, so I’ll probably see some actual drifting of the snow.  It’s cold enough that it’s breaking up into sugar snow as the wind drives it.  Good sledding snow if we get enough of it.  Not so good for snowmen or snow balls.  If school is called again tomorrow, I may just take a personal day, bundle up the kinder and take them sledding at the park.

Dinner tonight will be another whooped together pot roast.  Beef roast, chopped onion, half a bag of russet potatoes, one Sam Adams Winter Porter, a can of beef broth, and a two pound bag of baby carrots in the crock pot on high for 8 hours.  Just what the doctor ordered on a cold and snowy day.

Tonight’s entertainment will be a cheery fire, a cup of cocoa, and watching the cable guy come out to replace the digital cable box that got fried when we had our power issue last week.  What a rocking, swinging life I lead!

If you’re snowed in, rained in, or flooding, stay safe.  I’m gonna go cuss at my xterm emulator some more.