Re: Fixed it.

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sig230 wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:02 pm Big decision now is Whiskey, Bourbon, Tequila, Mezcal and Margaritas.
:w00t: Brings back some memories. Gotta tell this tale. Mother raised southern baptist (her father traveling preacher). She seldom ever said a curse word. Church every Sunday. I moved in to my old bedroom with her during a divorce as she was alone in a 5 bedroom huge house and yard during the 60's. I drank a lot in those days and Texas did not have legal mix drinks at the time. You brought your own bottle and bought set ups. I brought many an unfinished 5th or pint home and would place on a shelf in my closet - bourbon, gin, vodka, rum, tequila, southern comfort. She would hide my beer in the fridge, in fear someone might see it if she had a visitor.
One day after coming in after a particularly bad day at work, I went to the closet to grab a bottle of whatever - just really needed a drink - nothing - all gone. So I meander up to Mom's room and ask her if she knew where all the liquor had gone. She didn't say a word, got up and nodded to follow her into kitchen, where she got a step ladder, pushed up to the cabinets (old house with 10 ft. ceilings and doored cabinets to ceiling). She reached up on top shelf and picked up a quart mason jar, saying she had poured all the various booze into it. Then rapidly said, "I only drink it for medicinal purposes!!" I started laughing and I did not have the balls to even take one sip of that concoction, but she said it worked really good on a raspy throat. :roflmao:
"Being Republican is more than a difference of opinion - it's a character flaw." "COVID can fix STUPID!"
The greatest, most aggrieved mistake EVER made in USA was electing DJT as POTUS.

Re: Getting through this moment

630
Wino wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 4:40 pm
Big decision now is Whiskey, Bourbon, Tequila, Mezcal or Margaritas.

Did get a bit of good news from primary. Total cholesterol 159.
Sounds like the wine is having the desired effect! Speaking of, where's my glass?
Wino wrote: Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:44 pm She reached up on top shelf and picked up a quart mason jar, saying she had poured all the various booze into it. Then rapidly said, "I only drink it for medicinal purposes!!" I started laughing and I did not have the balls to even take one sip of that concoction, but she said it worked really good on a raspy throat. :roflmao:
During Prohibition, I understand, Islay whiskys could be prescribed for a variety of ailments. Something something medicinal peat? I'll drink to that.

Re: Getting through this moment

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Smoked, beer-steamed cheese and onion patties

A few things have to be in place before the average griller can perform smoked, beer-steamed cheese and onion patties on the backyard hibachi or what not. One of these things is pink torpedo onions, but they are not the first, which is beer, coupled with the idea of cosmic balance—usually a nebulous concept but here specific, the balance on a planetary scale between full and empty beer containers, whether bottles, cans, growlers, or what have you: it is perceived under our current conditions that balance between full and empty must be achieved while they continue to make more OR ELSE really bad things might happen, worse than Pizzagate. Read it on the internet. Must be true.

Insanity, I know. We all bear our burdens. Not only that, this recipe shows one, but you really do six patties because there are six in your family and you have a huge lid to a pot. One patty makes it seem simple. But we’re in 2020. Nothing seems as it is, nor will it ever again, if there is an again. But I digress.

After having taken what proved to be futile shots at the imbalance of fulls over empties globally during the afternoon, you become hungry, and perhaps also a bit fuzzy. Fire up the grill. Drizzle olive oil on the patty and pop it on the grate while you put the bun way at the back where the face will toast while the rest remains soft and fresh.

Now’s when you slice that torpedo onion about a quarter inch thick. Add an equally thick slice of your favorite extra sharp cheddar >cough< Tillamook, but here’s where it’s tricky but essential. You sliced the corners of the hunk of cheese to yield an eight sided thing. And ate the corners.

You grill the patty about one third on one side and flip it. Grill it one third more on that side. Flip it and do quick stuff. Put the fat torpedo slice on top the patty with the narrow side up. Then put on the eight sided cheese slice that fits exactly on top the onion piece. (No? Not my problem. Improvise, adapt, over come, and make it so.) You do this while that side is still pretty hot. Patty/onion/cheese. Now you get an old pot lid and slip it down on top to keep the heat in. Here is where we find potential danger, so take heed. But what happened shows the way to heaven, if only until you finish eating the final product.

**Cats are both a comfort like soft socks and an irritant like a long hair in your spaghetti. We have two cats. Sort of like red socks washed with the linen table cloth of Life, the one inherited from your Russian Grand Mamma on your mother’s side.**

I’m right handed, so I hold my beer there. Spatula in my left hand, hand so stupid I never let it handle the old and rusty skeleton key that opens the spidery iron lock down in the basement—one wrong turn and the lock has to be professionally dismantled to be opened while your impatient wife waits above to take a shower. Relax: water heater in there.

Stupid spatula hand reaching to the patty. Smart beer hand with the pot lid hooked in the pinky finger by its top. Standing right at the barbie. Fluttering night moth. Jumping cats.

The casual observer would have seen spitting and hissing and a flurry of smoky, steamy chaos accompanied by a strange and forceful howling in an unknown dialect. If we slow down the film, though, we can see that both cats simultaneously jumped the moth.

Under normal circumstances this would have been adorable. But in slo mo the wretched moth thought the Coleman lantern was somewhere she needed to be. The cats thought they needed the moth with my smart hand between moth and cats. And gravity thought the beer needed to gush down into the broiling barbie as the lid slipped its pinky and fell atop the patty with a clang. (Really six and a big lid, eh). No cats were harmed, though each erupted vocally as if deep fried.

This is how things stood. An unfortunate six or seven ounces of prime local India Pale Ale doused the coals, sending clouds and clouds of fragrant steam and smoke up into the heavens. And it must be noted, up into the pot lid as well. This smoky steam burned super hot up under the lid there. It did some things. There’s that tapered onion slice there, getting cooked and smoked quick like from the outside in. Then there’s the manly and nearly fatally-thick cheese slice up on top. First the outside, then a few inner, subsequent rings of the onion shrank a bit from cooking, each contracting, forcing each successive ring upward about half its thickness. There’s a little bath tub forms up there. It fills with melted cheese.

You’re welcome.

It’s like Madame Curie without the lead-lined coffin. Accident. But tasty as all get out. What’s not to like about a smoky, melty, cheesy burger, a beer, and a squirt bottle for cat revenge? Good times.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Getting through this moment

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I've really enjoyed streaming Iive Grateful Dead shows in the audio while watching bears fishing for salmon on the visual.



They're pretty far north, so this time of year you're likely to hit sunlight about any time of day or night.

What shall we say--shall we call it by a name?
As well to count the angels dancing on a pin.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Getting through this moment

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In California, we wore flannel to concerts then smoked the shirts when we got home.

Hard to keep lit, I must admit, but it cured me of hai karate.

on edit

After a few hours, a memory from the dim, dark, days nearly beyond recall began to precipitate. I chased the rabbit down the hole only to find a single thing: the result of chasing the epic epicurean experience. In a state of non-ordinary reality unavailable to the average American after such an evening, we needed an extreme experience to cap the night. Having only the ingredients for the good ol' standard Frankenstein sandwiches, plus a hippie-fied refrigerator, we altered the basic recipe. First, crunchy, but of course. Second, Smucker's Strawberry preserves--don't even start with me here. Third, whole wheat bread. Hippies. Finally, fresh horseradish, the kind in the jar has to be refrigerated else it goes bad like kim chee, and gets explosive. So we had to eat it. Really, you haven't lived until you've had this sandwich. For me, I prolly go a bit heavy on the horseradish for the average person. Now, the hot tip is to assuage the singe with strawberries.

So there it is.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Getting through this moment

642
Ergo, butter.

It's just my wife and me, and I had planted four chard engines--these in my compost-fortified south forty that's so rich I dropped a dollar bill there and found a fiver in the morning. I mean, my compost pile is older than most of the interns in Wash, DC. I have worms the size of drainage pipes.

So, suddenly chard. If you've ever been faced by a phalanx of fiber and Vitamin A size of a Clydesdale, you'll know what I'm talkin' about. We had to eat it. Harvested a bale along with some basil and oregano and headed in. Had some random veggies in the hopper and a juicy onion from my neighbor three doors down also grows for the locals' other tastes, so I put on the rice and began to decide about this.

Our normal temps here hover around 100. We locals are totally acclimated long as it doesn't get up like 102 or 4 for too long. We acclimate by going to olive oil. Very clean, keeps things lubricated, and we have California Olive Ranch just up the road from us gets us cold pressed virgins you have to eat with a spoon. So very tasty. That's how we acclimate. Same as we head into Fall, we start to pack on a few pounds. Some folks chase cheese, some liquid carbs, some put it all together in a pizza night three times a week. We pad so we're warm.

So, summer and spooned in cold pressed virgin olive oil. But, see, chard has this tad of bitterness needs to be contrasted in some way with another harmonious but exotic flavor so as not to dominate. You can do this with the right onion sometimes. Gotta have a tad of sweet. Walla Walla, Washington onions. Those are the ones. Not here and now, though. But if you don't have the right onion and you have these random veggies, and there's chardus maximus, and you have olive oil--no matter how tasty or pure--there is little one can do.

Ergo, butter.

Now, see, you chop the oin first and it goes in with the halfastick. While that's on at a pretty low flame you gotta wash the chard and cut the stems pretty off. Shake the leaves out a bit 'cause you'll have to cook that water out later if you don't. You stack those huge leaves one atop another like you're gonna roll a fat Cuban along your thighs. Six or seven even eight leaves. Then you roll 'em up tight, like that Cuban, but on the cutting board. Got this long sausage.

Now, those of you who don't hone your knife before you get at veggies run all kinds of risks, and onion juice is one. A sharp knife: no tears. Have to push so hard the floor creaks? Danger Will Robinson. A dull knife is a dangerous knife. Also, a dull knife munches the chard rather than slices it and makes it bitter beyond butter--and that's saying a lot. Sharpen your knife before each use. The blood you don't spill will be your own.

So this long roll of chard. You slice it in 1 mm slices, and you bring the knife up after each cut. This leaves the roll intact, but it's sliced to the board, leaving these slices. You carefully work your curled fingers back to the end of the chard, slicing and slicing, and leave it there. You use your knife blade to separate it in half in the middle and move the two halves apart. You take your blade along a half and turn in ninety degrees away from you. You see these slices. You got that eight inch knife so you cut along the roll across each slice at that ninety degree cut just like the first slices. You end up with a zillion 1 mm square bits of chard to cook into sweetened gooey goodness. You are milling the chard.

Get the chard in there right away and cook the onions and chard down to a chunky mush. Takes two beers' time. Go slow and don't burn the butter. Everything comes to the person who waits. The mush is the base for the other veggies to cook in. Tonight organic Mexican asparagus, organic California broccoli, and a couple dozen dried cranberries. Over rice. Grated Asiago cheese. To die for, I say. Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA.

I predict an extra long bike ride in the morning to burn some o' that butter, eh.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: Getting through this moment

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Love this thread.

Had a few hours of bliss this morning. Work has been very busy, but I have a few days off starting today. Started the day catching up with my wife over a cup of coffee on the back deck (I travel for work). Then she took daughter into town for orthodontist appointment, so I threw my Blackhawk in the truck and drove to the spot on the back of our land where I shoot. Shot three boxes of 38 spc, nice and slow. The holes in the paper are starting to look like groups.

Single action bliss. Nothing around me but the woods. After shooting, I enjoyed the quiet with a cup of coffee by myself. Weather was perfect--started with a flannel shirt, but had to take it off. That kind of perfect.

Daughter is a newly converted vegetarian, so she wanted to make a vegetarian brunch for the three of us, and she fired that up just as I got home. Spent the rest of the day with wife and daughter. Life is good. Hope you are all finding times like this.

Thanks for starting this thread. I love seeing how people are getting through.

Re: Getting through this moment

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Mostly this summer I have coped by drinking to excess. Ignoring the things that need to be done. 2 weeks ago worst case scenario happened when my son and his family all came down with the virus.

It really snapped me out of it and put me into high gear for catch up. First chore I changed the fuel filters on my tractor. Then I replaced a leaky hydraulic hose on my front end loader.

next came the 200 hour service for the tractor. Transmission and front axle fluid change, then oil and filter. I attached the King Kutter rotary mower and it went on unusually smooth and spent a very rewarding 4 hours cutting brush and turning my property into a park.

Took a good hot shower and then made a favorite meal for my wife. Linguine with shrimp and clams.

Phase 2 starts tonight. A meeting with my state legislator to get campaign signs and list of DFL friendly people so I can cruise around the county putting up signs. I've come to the conclusion that life as I once knew it is over, well for now anyways. No more shaking hands or being close to people. Bars and restaurants will be history. My life will have to revolve around my property and family. Just a few friends who I trust.

Re: Getting through this moment

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SIL and I followed a Codigo Tequila streaming presentation put on by Total Wine - wish I'd taken a picture of the six Tequilas with an accumulative cost of just under $800 US Dollars. The streaming presentation was a total bust, lasting about 14 minutes total and went thru the various Tequilas so fast we couldn't taste/sample quick enough. So we gave up and just drank some of each at our pace. SIL brought the most expensive Anejo $265 750ml. Blanco was lowest rated and bottle of another Anejo (less age) $100 we determined best buy & taste compared to the two expensive. Good time had by all.

Probably several other things I should have been doing constructively - like house and garage cleaning, but since I'll not be going anywhere anytime soon, those chores will still be here when I get in the mood.

All take care and stay safe.
"Being Republican is more than a difference of opinion - it's a character flaw." "COVID can fix STUPID!"
The greatest, most aggrieved mistake EVER made in USA was electing DJT as POTUS.

Re: Getting through this moment

650
Kiddo wanted to take a walk in the rain the other night. It was dark, and we got chilled a bit, but that little hand in my hand, that silly grin ... turned one of the worst days in recent memory into one I'll always remember for the best reasons.

Next few weeks are going to be intense. Not looking forward to it, and won't have much time for myself anymore. Might get one more range trip in before fall. Feel like I'm getting a better handle on my grip, and my trigger discipline. Want to see if I am.

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