Category Archives: Fine Dining

Adventures in Stuffing

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No. I didn’t actually stuff anything, but I did make some stuffing.

Allow me to elaborate.

I had some leftover fish and chips from Sunday. There was not a lot there, but it would be enough if I made a little something else. This sounded like a perfect opportunity to make some Stove Top Stuffing I had bought at the market a few weeks ago and just never had the chance to make. I realized my measuring glass never made it out of the Brighton House with me, but fortunately I had a full set of measuring cups. I measured out the water and put it on to boil, put in the half stick of margarine and let it sit for a bit. As I added the contents of the packet, I couldn’t believe how much was coming out of the single pack. I tried it mix it as best I could as it just got thicker and thicker. I let it sit for a bit longer while I checked the box. As it turns out, a single packet is actually six servings.

Talk about getting served.

I ate an entire bowl of stuffing, since I had eaten the fish and chips while I was making the stuffing. The bowl seemed like a lot to me, but there was still at least twice that left in the pot. I put it in a container and threw it in the fridge for later. Not sure how I’ll reheat it without a microwave, but it sure was easy to make on the stove.

Birthday 2008 Part 2: The Cake was not a lie

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Day 2 started with me groggily getting out of bed, grabbing my work laptop and heading into the basement. An hour later, I had the network back up with access to the internet. Unfortunately, I ended up having to reset my router causing me to lose all of my security settings and MAC addresses for each laptop allowed on our network. Fortunately, I wrote most of them down in my little black book. This was followed by futzing around a bit online, checking e-mail, message boards and news sites, then starting to do a little packing.
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No rest for the wary

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I’ve been pretty busy lately and have had lots of stuff to blog, but just haven’t gotten to it. I hope to address that in the near future, but I’ll be going away again for a week. This time my family is going on a cruise leaving San Juan, Puerto Rico and visiting such hot spot destinations as Curacou, St Maarten, St. Thomas and Aruba. Joining me on this jet-set excursion will be my parents, my sister and her boyfriend. I will, as always, be the fifth wheel, but I get my own cabin, so I think some freelance adventuring on my own may be in my future, particularly at the buffets. The ship is supposed to be massive. I think its a Royal Carribean cruise. I’m sparse on the details just now because I’ve been so busy and the trip was finalized so very very late in the game. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to share when I return. I have lots of packing and errand running to do before we leave. The trip will be from December 24th to December 31st. Just in time to be back for the New Years bash at the Braintree House.

In other news, the one rusty spot in my aluminum-walled life of the future will be scrubbed away at the turning of the new year. The fourth roommate in the Brighton house that we found on CraigsList will be moving out because she found she couldn’t stand living with three of the most easy-going people on the planet. Taking her place will be the Duke.

…and there was much rejoicing.

Valentine Foreboding

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Whenever I see my mom, she usually gives me some sort of candy or food. I think its just so she feels better knowing that I’m at least eating something, even if its not so healthy. I used to forget to eat a lot when I was younger. I picked up the ability to ignore hunger pain while I was in college.

Anyhow, the last time I saw my mom, she gave me a bag of Dove Milk Chocolate hearts for Valentines Day. I ate one today and decided that they were sinfully delicious and then proceeded to eat about 14 more in quick succession. On the inside of the foil wrappers are little messages bearing some sort of Valentine’s Day cheer. I have never been one to be a fervent supporter of such a masochistic holiday, but as I read some of the messages in the wrappings of these little bits of chocolate delight, I was puzzled.

Among the holiday cheer, I came across these joyous bits of text:

  • Remember your first crush.
  • Be your own Valentine.
  • Chocolate always loves you back.

I’m sensing a bit of malcontent among the elves that Dove has writing these foil messages of warmth. Depending on how you read them, they only get more desperate:

  • Discover how much your heart can hold [out]
  • Sleep under the stars tonight [since you have nowhere else to sleep]
  • Share a secret [and ruin a friendship]
  • Go where your heart takes you. [Straight to the bottle]
  • Be a little mysterious. [Put the bottle in a brown paper bag.]

Seriously, Dove. You might want to get your Human Resources department to look into that.

Warm Valentine's Salutations

Two years worth of leftovers

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It is time to clean out the fridge when you go to put some leftovers in it and find leftovers dating back to the previous year.

2 Years of Leftovers

Might be hard to make out but they say, from top to bottom:

Rattlesnake Pasta
2006.01.19

Rattlesnake Pasta
1/5/2006

Rattlesnake Pasta
12/29/2005

Looks like its time to switch back to the pizza.

Condiment Foul!

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A little while ago on an Uno’s night, my friend Dave was trying to pour ketchup onto his plate. As it happens the neck of the bottle was clogged as is a common problem with ketchup bottles. The next thing I know he is sticking a french fry into the bottle to try and unclog it.

I was astounded and taken aback! You cannot violate a ketchup bottle in such a way! Other people pour from that bottle’s orifice which has been thoroughly violated. How many times have you gotten a dirty piece of flatware at the beginning of a meal? People are then sticking these barely clean instruments into places where no object should go outside of the viscous joy of ketchup! You do NOT go in the out! But my friend didn’t even do that, he stuck a piece of food in the bottle. Its bad enough that restaurants pour the remains of one bottle into another.

For the readers’ benefit, I have linked to two separate explanations of how to properly dislodge that little wall of ketchup blocking the neck.

The short version.

The in-depth version.

Don’t let me catch you sticking things where they don’t belong!

For more information on the history of ketchup go here.

Look Ma! No Drips!

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I went grocery shopping the other day. Shocking, I know.

I needed to refuel on my condiment of condiments, ketchup. I saw a peculiar looking bottle and opted to purchase it for my abstract culinary purposes. In one more example of human achievement, Heinz has stumbled upon the apex of ketchup bottle evolution. Not only is it upside-down so you don’t have to wait for the ketchup to ooze to the top when pouring, but it also has this sterile white clean cap that does not leak! I make note of this sterile white state because there’s no mess. Mind you, when you squeeze the bottle, the condiment is propelled at such a speed it could put most super soakers to shame, but no fuss, no muss. Whatever that means.

From the Heinz site:

Heinz Turns Ketchup Upside Down!
Now get the same great thick & rich taste of Heinz Tomato Ketchup when you want it and where you want it with Heinz Easy Squeeze!TM The upside-down bottle design ensures that your ketchup is always ready when you are, and the stay-clean cap with control valve gives you total control over where your ketchup goes. Available in two sizes: 20-ounce and 32-ounce.





By the way, don’t buy that organic Heinz ketchup crap they have. Thats what they serve at Legal Seafood and its gross!

Freshness Sustained!

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Nabisco! You rascals you!

After 20 years of struggling to keep your cookies fresh in the package, you’ve finally come up with a solution.

First it was the annoying twist-tie type bar to fold around the end of the folded package, but that kept falling off and was easy to lose. Then a couple of years ago, a resealable sticky tab was placed on the top of the package to stick down the end of the folded package. There wasn’t enough packaging to fold up and under the sticky tab and if you cut some of the plastic insert out from the inside, the sticky tab rarely did an effective job of keeping it sealed. A true disappointment.

You’ve finally had your wacky scientists and engineers hard at work to discover the true way to keep your scrumptious delicacies from going to waste before their prime, while remaining in the original packaging.

At Last!