Anyway, I decided to make beef brisket and came across this recipe.  I had just picked up an obscene amount of garlic at Costco, so this was perfect.   Overall, it tasted ok – about as meh as you can get.

But one thing I gotta talk about is their suggested method for peeling large amounts of garlic.  If it’s one or two, I’ll smash it with the side of a knife and peel it .  But there was a need to have it whole.  You can make a little incision on it and peel it by hand, but OJ Simpson will be out of jail by the time you peel the required 36 cloves of garlic.   They suggested dropping them in boiling water for 30 seconds and then peeling when they cool down a little.

Well, it doesn’t work.  It sucked.  It was a major pain in the ass (that’s the English word for “tookis”).  I have a great way of peeling large quantities, but at this point it was too late.  Stay tuned, I’ll show you in an upcoming post.

recipe

Braised Brisket with 36 Cloves of Garlic

Taken from Epicurious. 

- About 36 fat unpeeled garlic cloves (1 2/3 to 2 cups) or an equivalent amount of smaller cloves, plus 1 teaspoon minced garlic

- 3 tablespoons olive oil

- A first-or second-cut beef brisket (about 5 pounds), trimmed of excess fat, wiped with a damp paper towel, and patted dry

- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

- 3 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade or good-quality low-sodium purchased

- 3 or 4 fresh thyme sprigs, or 2 teaspoons dried leaves

- 2 fresh rosemary sprigs, plus 1 teaspoon chopped leaves

- Salt and freshly ground black pepper

- 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Jewish recipe 

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

2. Drop the garlic cloves into a small saucepan of boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain immediately. Peel as soon as the garlic is cool enough to handle. Set aside on paper towels to dry.

3. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed roasting pan or casserole large enough to accommodate the meat in one layer. Use two burners, if necessary. Add the brisket and brown well on both sides, about 10 minutes. Transfer the brisket to a platter and set aside. (Or brown the meat under the broiler: place the brisket, fat side up, on a foil-lined broiler pan under a preheated broiler. Broil for 5 to 6 minutes on each side, until browned. Don’t allow it to develop a hard, dark crust, which might make the meat tough or bitter. Move the meat around as necessary, so it sears evenly.)

4. Pour off all but about 1 tablespoon of fat remaining in the pan and add the garlic cloves. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the garlic edges are tinged with gold. Add the vinegar and deglaze the pan, scraping up all the browned bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon. Add the stock, thyme, and rosemary sprigs, and reduce the heat to a simmer. Salt and pepper the brisket to taste on all sides, and add it to the pan, fat side up. Spoon the garlic cloves over the meat.

5. Place the brisket in the oven, cover (if you have no lid, use heavy-duty foil), and cook, basting every half-hour, until the meat is fork tender, 2 1/2 to 3 hours or longer. (As the meat cooks, periodically check that the liquid is bubbling gently. If it is boiling rapidly, turn the oven down to 300°F.)

6. The brisket tastes best if it is allowed to rest, reabsorbing the juices lost during braising, and it’s easiest to defat the gravy if you prepare the meat ahead and refrigerate it until the fat solidifies. That is the method I use, given here, but the gravy can be prepared by skimming the fat in the traditional way, if you prefer. If you go that route though, do let the meat rest in the pan sauce for at least an hour.

7. Cool the brisket in the pan sauce, cover well with foil, and refrigerate until the fat congeals. Scrape off all solid fat. Remove the brisket from the pan and slice thinly across the grain.

8. Prepare the gravy: Bring the braising mixture to room temperature, then strain it, reserving the garlic and discarding the thyme and rosemary sprigs. Skim and discard as much fat as possible from the liquid. Puree about one half of the cooked garlic with 1 cup of the defatted braising liquid in a food processor or a blender. (If you want a smooth gravy, puree all of the cooked garlic cloves.) Transfer the pureed mixture, the remaining braising liquid, and the rest of the cooked garlic to a skillet. Add the chopped rosemary, minced garlic, and lemon zest. Boil down the gravy over high heat, uncovered, to the desired consistency. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Rewarm the brisket in the gravy until heated through.

9. Arrange the sliced brisket on a serving platter. Spoon some of the hot gravy all over the meat and pass the rest in a separate sauce boat.

food

recipe

What serious subjects?  Ricardo Montalban’s chest and Stevie Nicks’ dating habits, of course.  Silly you.

**

I learned a new term recently – Earworm.  There are a few different meanings with the obvious being a bug that attacks corn.  The term also refers to that nasty creature that went into people’s brains in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Do you remember that flick? The one with Ricardo Montalban and the nice pecs?

Yeah, I’m benching around 350 these days… (watchmojo.com)

Star Trek

Earworm is also the term used for a song that gets stuck in your head  for days and you can’t get it out.  One of the popular remedies is to actually listen to it over and over again until you get sick of it.  That often works, but what I always do is to tell others about the song so it’ll automatically get stuck in their heads, too.  No, it doesn’t really help to get it out my mine, but I’m a firm believer of sharing the wealth.

There are two songs that seem to become earworms for me a few times a year – I Want it That Way and this week’s Guilty Pleasure, the only hit from Walter Egan.  What’s notable about this song is that Lindsey Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac fame, produced it.  He even played guitar on the track and sang backup vocals along with Mac bandmate Stevie Nicks.  Apparently she was the inspiration for the song as Egan was starting to date her.   Can’t say I blame the guy, she was hot back then -

http://www.everythingunderthemoon.net

Fleetwood Mac

And she got around.  Everyone knows about how she dumped Lindsey and started banging drummer Mick Fleetwood during the sessions for their album Rumours.  But a quick search came up with several of her former flings – most notably Joe Walsh, Don Henley, and Dave Stewart (Eurhythmics).  But the best one had to have been Chicago Bulls legend Norm Van Lier.

basketball

But back to Walter Egan…  What’s worse: being forever known as a one-hit wonder or having an eerie resemblance to Scorpio, the villain from Dirty Harry?

the-dirtiest.com

movies

Here’s the video.  Lindsey and Stevie aren’t in it, but you can definitely hear their voices.

By the way…  I have a thousand Guilty Pleasure songs, but if you have one that you want to see posted, let me know.

music

video

humor

Maybe.

Actually, no, I’m not going to make a concerted effort to write more about wine. I just can’t.

This topic came up in the comments section to The Drunken Cyclist’s post on wineblogging.  While I do love wine, writing about it is a very personal experience.  And that’s the case with everyone else who’s ever given an opinion about wine – whether you’re Robert Parker or the guy in the gutter drinking $2 bottles of skullpopper.  It’s not like watching a movie, judging a footrace, or listening to a song – where just about everyone is going to see or hear the same exact thing.  How we perceive a wine’s bouquet, tannins, aciditiy, etc. is completely dependent on your taste buds and your smell receptor thingies all in your head. Then add in other factors like what you ate with it, expectations based on the producer’s reputation, how much you paid, and whether some jerkweed cut you off on the freeway.  All of these things have a huge impact on how you rate a wine.   And let’s not forget that whoever is describing the wine is having that wine at that moment.  Readers can’t taste it themselves and even bottles from the same batch can be subject to storage conditions.

There are no rights or wrongs when it comes to wine descriptors.  The same bottle of merlot can have aromas of cedar box to one person and chocolate to another.  Back when I took classes at the International Sommelier Guild, the instructor said it was like the Jedi mind trick.   He would say he smelled eucalyptus and old man’s underwear in a specific Shiraz and, lo and behold, everyone in the class suddenly got the same aromas.

wine

So here’s the rub – I have no problem writing about what I perceived in a wine.  I can do that all day.  But I often wonder if it really matters to you readers.  You can’t smell that hint of barnyard I picked up on a Burgundy and do you even care?  This blog is more for entertainment than information.  Writing a wine review that is entertaining, interesting, and with broad appeal is very difficult to do for a writing hack like me.  At least for now.  I’ll still keep trying and, at some point, maybe I’ll find my “wine voice.”

But the other reason I haven’t written about wine is that I’ve actually been enjoying beer more than wine lately.  There’s been an explosion in craft beers across the country with some very interesting concoctions and collaborations.  Actually, the same can be said about bourbon, too.  It’s an exciting time to be a drinker here in America, so wine’s taken a back seat for a while.

But just to prove I do actually, in fact, drink wine, I’ve recently become a member of The Wine Century Club.

vino

This is a club that ‘s main goal is to encourage people to try different kinds of wines besides the usual cabs, chards, or chiantis.  Anyone can be a member of the club as long as they’ve tried at least 100 different grape varieties (hence the “Century” in the name).  It’s kinda fun to go through and it’s free to join.  All you have to do is fill out their form and they’ll send you a certificate just like this…

blogging

Ok, they probably won’t send one exactly like this.  Look closer…

That says “Doppel Member”.  I guess I didn’t realize this when I filled out the application, but I’ve had over 200 different varietals of wine.  According to the cover letter, there are about 1,300 wine century members worldwide and just 58 of them are Doppel Members.

See? I told you I drink wine.

So what do you think?  If you’re a casual wine drinker, does it matter to you what I perceived in a wine?   Or are you just looking for a thumbs-up/thumbs-down?  And if you’re a wine blogger, am I way off base?

Wrong.

At the time there were only about three or four bars or clubs I could catch a band play and, unfortunately, it was almost always jazz.  And you know how I feel about jazz.  There was also a lot of folk music, which is only slightly better.  Music preferences aside, a big problem with both genres is the people they attract.  Being in a bar with them has got to be the 8^th circle of hell.  They sit there, leaning forward, listening a tad TOO intently.  Or they’ll close their eyes, tilt their head back, and nod slowly with a grin on their face like they were basking in the warmth of the sun – or were on the receiving end of awesome oral.  Regardless of their preferred listening posture, they can’t stand if you dare talk during the performance.  One time, I got the stink eye for ordering a beer too loudly.

And hippies.  Jazz and folk attract way too many hippies.

Even if I did like jazz and folk, the local music scene would still be a little stale.  The University has different performing arts events but the perfomers are mostly out-of-towners.  There’s also the Ann Arbor Summer Fest and Art Fair, but a lot of the acts are the same year after year.  So the very few opportunities for showcasing the local music scene are often squandered.  But things are changing.

ann arbor

waterhill.org

This takes place  on the first Sunday in May in the Water Hill neighborhood close to downtown Ann Arbor.  The event consists of musicians who either live or work in the area performing for passersby on lawns, driveways and porches.  When it started in 2011 there were 100 musicians participating in a couple dozen houses, often without any kind of sound amplification.   There was everything form swing quartets, singer-songwriters, jazz ensembles to kids playing guitars – truly a mishmosh of acts.   Now the event has grown, drawing huge crowds that spill onto the streets.    Thankfully, just about all the houses now have sound equipment.

music

The Appleseed Collective

local

I had a few hours to kill so I was able to make the event for the first time. My friends – The Bloodsucking Lawyers – have been to all three so I hung out with them whole time.  I didn’t get to see a lot of different acts, but there was something for everyone.

 neighborhood

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo

The biggest crowd I saw was for Vienna Teng who, having just finished her graduate degree, performed in her cap and gown.

music

Vienna Teng

She’s started her music career as a student at Stanford but, upon graduation, worked as some software geek.  She eventually quit that job and pursued music full time – a great decision because she is awesome.  Here’s the video for her song “Gravity’ -

Vienna Teng

music

Though now I’m wondering what she got her graduate degree in – music or engineering?

Obviously these musicians are committed to their craft and want to put on their performance.  But as I watched them play I got the sense that they were really enjoying themselves playing in their own “turf.”

Music

Wire in the Wood

Many of the acts there aren’t exactly the type of music I like and not all of them were good, either.  But that’s almost beside the point.  It’s a chance to hear local musicians who don’t get to perform at the too few performing opportunities in town.   And it’s a truly organic event that’s growing by word-of-mouth that, for now at least, is not there to make money.  Walking around the event, it seemed that everyone had a feeling that they were part of something really special.  I can’t wait ’til next year’s!

Even though this one was chock-full of hippies.

hippies

Part 1: We spent wayyyyy too much because we tourists.

Part 2: We got stuck in Denver and had great Chinese food and meh Mexican food. (Meh- xican?)

Part 3: We had an amazing meal at Euclid hall and barely made it home.

travel tourism food

We were checking out of our hotel at around noon and were getting pretty hungry. The family likes Chipotle a lot and I knew that the original restaurant was somewhere in Denver. However my suggestion to go find it was met with a nasty glare from Boom Boom. That’s because at that point of the trip she was getting a little sick and tired of my gathering material for blog posts. Luckily, it was the closest Chipotle restaurant to our hotel. #nobrainer

That’s Boom Boom at the front door giving me a “hurry up and take the damn picture” look.

family

When we got there we were surprised to find that there wasn’t anything really special to let you know this was the first one. Sure the green signs are a little different, but there were several in Denver with those. Inside, it was smaller than usual, but that’s about it. I figured there’d be a plaque or pictures or anything, really. But it looked like your regular old Chipotle.

As I was paying, one of the women behind the counter asked where we were from. At first, I thought they picked up some kind of Chicago accent or something. Then I realized they saw me taking that picture outside. When we confirmed that we were tourists, a small part of me was wondering if we’d get charged triple, like some of those places at Keystone. Instead, the next question we were asked was, “what size t-shirts do you want?”

Suuuuhhhh – weeeet!!

shirt

The burrito itself was pretty much pretty like every other Chipotle burrito I’ve had.

Click here for my official review on Chipotle burritos.

food

Nice flavor, some heft to it, not spectacular, but definitely serviceable. I really wish they wouldn’t steam the shells on them because they become too rubbery. But I was expecting that, so no big deal. When we finished the manager, Jose, greeted us and took us on a tour of the place.

First stop – the trap door to the basement.

travel

Second stop – the basement. Yeah, that’s about it. There’s really not much to see there. Remember, this place started out as a regular ol’ burrito shop. So all that was needed was a kitchen, dining space, storage…

and an office.

small business

Still, it was great to hear Jose talk about the history of the restaurant and it’s commitment to natural ingredients. It was even cooler to sign the wall…

Of course I went for the shameless plug…

marketing

Here’s a pic of me and Jose. That’s me on the left with the bad hat hair.

food

Overall, it was a terrific experience. It’s not every day that you get to see the something like this. It was great to see The Pieholes really digging the tour and knowing that it was more than the usual burrito lunch. And the free t-shirt helped, too.

For me, while they don’t make my favorite burritos, it’s hard to ignore that Chipotle is THE burrito juggernaut. As Jose told me, they have over 500 locations now and are still expanding. So it truly is admirable that they’ve stuck with their commitment to using natural ingredients, too. Yeah, seeing the original one was definitely cool.

But perhaps the biggest thrill for me was being able to say to Boom Boom, “See? If it wasn’t for my taking pictures of the place for my ‘silly little blog’, we wouldn’t have gotten the tour!”

It’s the little things in life…

travel

tourism

A good workout song will not only energize you it, if played loud enough, should distract you from the real world. This helps you focus all your attention and energy on the workout itself. Seems obvious, right? I don’t think there’s a soul out there that prefers to lift weights to NPR.

“Dude, when I want to bench press 350, I bust out the Garrison Keillor and crank it up.”
- Said no one. Ever.
(orlandosentinel.com)

music npr

I’m always on the lookout for new songs, but I don’t commute for work and am not in my car long enough to listen to a lot of radio. So I end up getting exposed to a lot of new tunes at Pure Barre, many of which become huge hits months later. I think the playlists come from the corporate office, where I’m sure they have some team of hipsters selecting the songs. Seriously, how the hell do I get THAT gig?

So here are some great songs that I first heard at Pure Barre. Not only are they awesome for working out, but they make terrific background music while searching for pictures of Lindsay Lohan.

videos

Elle me Dit by Mika

French

Who Dat Girl by FloRida (featuring Akon)

rap

Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (featuring Ray Dalton)

pop

Anything Could Happen by Ellie Goulding

Memories by David Guetta and Kid Cudi

music

What are your favorite songs for exercising? How do you get new music? Do I have an unhealthy obsession with Lindsay Lohan?

Don’t answer that last one….

Friday

music

The problem is that you can’t just eat whatever you want, whenever you want.  It’s gotta go somewhere and that somewhere is usually in body parts you don’t want that extra weight to go.  For me, that’s the gut.  So what’s my secret for staying relatively healthy?  Two words – Exercise.

But out of all those posts, I’ve only mentioned the word “exercise” less than ten times.  And the latest mention of it was calling something “an exercise in futility”  - not anything about exercise itself. By comparison, I’ve mentioned or posted a picture of Lindsey Lohan eleven times.

mi9.com

Lohan

Make that 12 times.

Over the years, I’ve usually just done some combination of straight up cardio – jogging, walking, cycling – and weight lifting.   The problem is that with all of those, it’s pretty easy to plateau and you end up having to do more and more of the same.  That means tacking on additional miles and time at the gym.  That’s not a problem when you don’t have kids and are living in an apartment.  But anyone who has kids and a house can tell you that all that free time you had makes like those American Idol runners-up.  It just disappears, never to be seen again.

And don’t get me started on the time-suck that is this shining beacon of a blog….

Enter Pure Barre

fitness health

I recently hit my two-year anniversary of going there and I’m still not anywhere near plateau-ing.  Pure Barre started about 12 years ago in Michigan and has spread to over 100 locations in about 30 states.  It’s been featured all over the place and is growing by leaps and bounds.  It’s a one-hour class that features a lot of different moves to build strength, endurance, and bone density.  It’s a total full body workout that combines elements of yoga, pilates, and ballet.  There’s a ballet barre there, hence the name, but there’s no dance choreography or dancing involved.

I think the mere mention of ballet turns off a lot of guys to the workout.  In the time I’ve been doing it, there have been only one or two other guys who do it regularly.  I thought the lack of guys was just an Ann Arbor thing until I took a class in Denver.   At that one, I don’t think they’ve EVER had a guy in there.  I’m really quite surprised that more single guys haven’t joined simply for the opportunity to be in a room full of women.  Many beautiful women.

Not an actual class… (nolasocialite.com)

Of course, it could very well be that guys are afraid of the opposite.  They know that women can handle a helluva lot more pain than guys so they’re afraid of getting their asses kicked by the workout.  And  even worse – getting their asses kicked in front of that same roomful of beautiful women.

How tough is the workout?  There was an article in the Huffington Post  where their fitness writers tried it out.  Here’s what they said:

My abs and hamstrings wobbled so much during some of the exercises — more than I’d ever experienced before — and by the end of the class, I was completely exhausted and sore. I must say, it was the good kind of sore, though — the kind that comes with working out parts of the body that probably don’t get worked out enough.

and

Ay, chihuahua. My body has never experienced this kind of intensity. I felt a bit disheartened that some measly two-pound weights were murdering my arms and that a flimsy resistance band could make me shake so uncontrollably. Within the first two minutes, I knew there was going to be some soreness in my future. The class made me feel out of shape, something I hadn’t considered previously.

and

The pain is like having your insides twisted, pulled, and squeezed. If I fought it, the pain became worse. Once I surrendered to and accepted the pain, it was more bearable. It is like getting caught in the undertow of a wave.

Ok, that last one was actually one woman’s description of childbirth.  But it pretty much sums up how I felt in my first class.

But if you can stick with it and go 2-3 times a week, you’re going to see a noticeable difference in less than a month.  I got The Sicilian hooked on it and she said she saw a difference in less than two weeks.   The first change I saw was in my posture, which in itself is a gut-reducer.  Over time, I’ve developed a lot leaner muscle and improved flexibility.  I also have a lot more definition than at any point in my life – even after running a marathon years ago.   I can actually see abs, where for it was just some big mass of  undefined flesh with a few stray hairs.

What’d more important to me is that it’s a great “functional” workout. With running and lifting weights, I found that I didn’t necessarily get better at anything except running and lifting.  With Pure Barre, I’ve gained a ton of lower body strength and overall flexibility which is needed in just about any sport.  It’s given me more power in tennis, but the biggest impact was in my golf game.  The lower body strength has added 20-30 yards onto my drives alone.  And the increased flexibility allows for more control through the swing, which helps in consistency and accuracy.

So thanks, Pure Barre, for the killer workouts!  I’m going to head over there pretty soon because I got big ‘ol slab of pork belly in my immediate future.

Stay tuned – tomorrow’s post is going to feature some of the awesome tunes from PB.  It’s HERE

health

Have you tried Pure Barre or anything similar?  What do you do for exercise? 

health and wellness

blogging

And I thought we were friends…  Just kidding Heather, I’m thankful.   Everyone should go over there after reading this post.  She wrote the Girl-Crush Zooey Deschanel guest post, in addition to a ton of other awesome stuff on her own site.

For those of you not familiar with blogger awards, there are a few of these things circulating.  There’s Liebster, Versatile Blogger, Sunshine Blogger, Inspirational Blogger, etc. etc. etc.  They all pretty much work the same way – you get nominated by another blogger and then pass on the award to others like a chain letter.  Some, like the Liebster, involve answering a series of questions about yourself before sending along.  I really do appreciate the thought and it often is fun to read “secrets” about other bloggers.  It also does introduce you to other blogs you may not have seen before, and vice-versa.  That said, these things usually die in my inbox.

I had an idea for a blogger award that I still may launch – The Smokin’ Hot Blogger Award.  It’s where you nominate a bunch of other bloggers that are, well, smokin’ hot.   And I’m not talking about beautiful on the inside, because that could apply to 99% of bloggers, right?  I’m talking shallow, appearances-only judgment.  And there are several blog names I can rattle off right now that would deserve this award.

There are a couple problems, though.  First, I’d REALLY hate to exclude a person even if I think that person is so ugly they make Lyle Lovett look like Ryan Reynolds.

trialx.com, fanpop.com

art

The other problem is that I think there’s a lot of false advertising with profile pictures.   So while a blogger’s gravatar picture may look like this…

sheknows.ca

 beautiful woman

In real life, they look Mickey Rourke….

revewstl.com

This is a problem because I don’t want to be known as the guy with poor taste in appearances.  I got integrity and shit like that.

Anyway, I haven’t responded to one of these awards things in a while, so I thought it’d be fun.  This particular one involves answering questions about me, then passing on more questions for others to answer.

I thought I’d shake things up a little.  I’m going to ask the questions, but I’m inviting you to answer one or more of the questions in the comment section.   I worked long and hard on these things, so please do answer if you’re in the least bit inspired.  And if you see any good answers (or responses from hot bloggers) click over and check out their blog!

blogging

First the ones that Heather posed –

1. If you could live anywhere, and money were not an issue, where would you live and why?

- St Barth’s. Tropical, French food, boobs everywhere, and celebrity sightings.

2. What is your go to meal when you’re having people over?

- Beef short ribs braised in Pinot Noir.

3. If a zombie apocalypse were to actually happen, would your strategy be to hunker down in your home and wait it out, or pack up what you can and seek a more secure form of shelter? (the zombie apocalypse version could vary – 28 Days Later scenario where they die off – best case. Worst case – Walking Dead where they NEVER DIE!!!)

- As Season 2 of TWD showed when Herschel’s farm got overrun, no home is perfectly safe.  Keep moving.

4. What is your favorite music to cook to?

- Anything by Kanye West or Snoop Dogg

5. What’s your biggest pet peeve?

-  Drivers who don’t go the speed limit with no one in front of them.

6. Describe your blog in one sentence.

- Ostensibly a blog that takes a humorous approach to food and wine but I rarely write about wine so it really should be  called food-and-music-and-hot-celebrity-women.com but that’s way too long for a URL so I’ll just stay where I am and hope that no one calls me out on it.   (No one ever said it couldn’t be a run-on sentence.)

7. If you could have celebs over for a dinner party, who would be your top 3 invitees?

- Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox, and Kayden Cross.  Or just Willie Nelson.

8. For the rest of your life, you can only watch one movie. What movie would that be?

- Damn, this is tough.  Maybe Superbad? Or maybe an awesome porno. 

9. If your life were a sitcom, what would the show title be?

- “Better than Emeril’s Sitcom”

10. Beef or chicken?

- Pork.

11. What do you do to relax?

- Play the piano or guitar

blogging

So now my questions for you –

1 – What would you want served as your last meal?

2 – Red, white, or Rose?

3 – What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen sparrow?

4 – Who’s the hottest blogger NOT named “The Food and Wine Hedonist?”

5 – What are your favorite pizza toppings?

6 – If someone said you can have x-ray vision but you’d be permanently cross-eyed, would you take it?

7 – How accurate is your blog profile picture?

8 – Got any naked pictures of your significant other?

9 – Do you want any?

10 – What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

11 – What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

12 – Who’s your daddy?

Answer Away!!!

But I want to make it clear, I don’t do drugs  –

alcohol

In researching all the different songs about drugs, one from my youth reared it’s Guilty Pleasure head – Huey Lewis and The News’ “I Want a New Drug” -

1980s music

For you young ‘uns out there, these guys were inescapable in the 1980s and early 1990s. They had 19 songs hit the Top-10 and sold 30 million records worldwide. With songs like “Heart of Rock & Roll” and “If this is it,” it’s no exaggeration to say these guys were monstrously huge.

fanpop.com

Huey Lewis penis size

And you know what else was huge? Apparently Huey Lewis’ … er … um … thingy.  There is some super-groupie named Connie Hamzy who maintains that she had “relations” of varying sorts with dozens of musicians over the years. The list is a veritable who’s who of stars including Neil Diamond, Frank Zappa, Rush (the whole band), Willie Nelson, both Van Halen Brothers, and many others. For a list, click here. In an interview with Howard Stern Hamzy said that, without a doubt, Huey Lewis possessed the largest … er… um … member of all the men she’s been with.

Dramatic pause for you to let that sink in.

Then I started thinking about Robert Altman’s 1993 film Short Cuts. I had never seen the movie, but I recall hearing that there’s a scene featuring a full frontal nudity shot of Huey Lewis. I Googled it to see if it did actually happen or if I was just imagining it. (Not that I sit around imagining Huey Lewis – or anyone else – doing full frontal. At least not often.)

I was a little disappointed. I did find many references to the scene, but not one screencap of it.  That’s just weird because the internet has pictures of just about anything you could think of – and a whole bunch you really DON’T want to imagine.  What’s even stranger is that, among the hundreds of images of a fully-clothed Huey Lewis that Google returned, there was a full-frontal picture of soccer star David Beckham.

Click here for that picture. You’re welcome.

Anyway, back to Huey Lewis…

Size of his … er … um … trouser snake notwithstanding, I was a fan of Huey Lewis back in the day. The music itself was catchy with its mixture of rock, blues, and doo-wop harmonies, all with that bouncy 80s beat underneath it. They really stuck hard to that formula and it resulted in a great run for them. It got really monotonous after a while, but at that point they were probably too rich to care.

One of their biggest hits was “Power of Love,” which was featured in the 1980s mega-movie Back to the Future -

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Back to the future

Back to the future

My favorite was their first major hit, “Do You Believe in Love” -

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video 1980s

Ahhh, the 1980s.  It was a time when you could film a music video with six guys ogling, hovering over – and later joining – a sleeping naked woman in a bed. And NOT make it seem creepy.

What was your favorite Huey Lewis song? Are you able to personally corroborate Connie Hamzy’s observation?  

humor

penis

I try really hard to make sure that anything I cook is visually appealing, even when I’m not posting pictures of it.  However when I started blogging a couple years ago, I didn’t have much experience taking pictures of food.   So anything did presentation-wise was really and exercise in futility as my (lack of) camera skills undermined all my efforts.  For example, one of my first recipes I posted was for braised veal cheeks over creamy polenta.  I was experimenting with braising liquids by using wine in one pot and Belgian beer in the other.

amateur photography

food photography

See what I mean?  In person it was actually really stunning looking. I even put that little swoosh of sauce on purpose.  AND let’s not forget the bread in the background.  But the picture itself really doesn’t do the food any justice.

So I made it a personal mission of mine to lose the title of “the world’s worst Asian photographer.”  I experimented with lighting and different angles.  I even bought a kick-ass camera.  And I think started getting better.   Take a look at this spicy avocado cream soup   I did last year -

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food porn

It’s a beaut, eh?  And that  picture was taken with an iPhone.

But recently, I made something that even Ansel Adams  or Herb Ritts couldn’t help.

I found the recipe in The Gastrokid Cookbook, a terrific one I picked up for a couple bucks when Borders closed.  It has great recipes in it that are meant to foster the next generation of foodies, while keeping their parents happy as well.  So, although it’s kid-centric, there are some very adult-friendly dishes such as salmon saltimbocca, Moroccan chicken, and The Spotted Pig’s Gnudi.

Because everything I’ve tried from the cookbook was a success,  I had no problem taking a flyer on this odd-sounding dish – pork with caramelized milk sauce.  It was really rich and completely delicious, but damn it was FUGLY.  In the description for it, they said “a dish needn’t be pretty to be pretty darned delicious.”  They even said the sauce would be slightly lumpy.  But I think I flat-out made it worse.  As you’ll see later, it’s not just slightly lumpy, it’s like grainy lumpy.  The official term for this is that “the sauce has broken.”

There are ways to fix this, but I was too lazy and the kids were starving.   So I kept it fugly and, thankfully, the kids didn’t care.  I’m definitely going to make this again as it was that tasty and I really recommend you try it, too.  It’s really easy and only takes a few ingredients.  Unless you’re trying to keep Kosher, then you better avoid it.  But I’m sure you knew that…

recipe

Pork with Caramelized Milk Sauce

- 1 pork tenderloin

- salt and freshly ground pepper

- 1 Tablespoon butter

- 3 cups milk

1.  Heat a heavy skillet over medium-high heat

2.  Season the pork on all sides with salt and pepper

pork recipe

3.  Melt the butter and brown the pork all over.

Pretty, isn’t it?

4.  Once browned, add a coup of milk and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer.

5.  After 15 minutes of simmering, add another cup of milk.

6.  After another 15 minutes, add the third cup of milk.

7.  After 45 minutes total cooking time, the pork will be tender and the milk will have reduced to caramelized clumps.  Remove the pork and collect the milk in a serving bowl.  Let the meat stand for 10 minutes, then carve and serve with the milk.

So here’s what it ended up looking like –

epic fail

See, I wasn’t kidding.

Have you ever made anything that looked like an abomination but was delicious?  Do you bother to try to fix it?  Or do you make like Barry White and just dim the lights super-low?

recipe 

photography