Freaky Friday Favorites

Not only is it Friday, but it is also my partner’s birthday!!!  So I’ll start off this week’s Freaky Friday Favorites with a picture for her!

PHOTOBOMBS!!!

Losing 14 Pounds

So far, on my nearly 4 weeks of “non-dieting,” I’ve lost 14 pounds.  I’m happy about that.  I hope to never see those pounds again.  Most of the pounds were gained after getting laid off.  I’m not making excuses, I shouldn’t have gained weight, but honestly such close proximity to the fridge 24 hours a day for six months is dangerous.  It isn’t like I haven’t screwed up on my non-diet during the month, but I had consequences for it.  So, I’m not thinking of it as screwing up, I’m thinking of it has just being accountable for what I eat.  I can eat certain things as long as I accommodate for it and get my ass to the gym or go for a longer walk. 

I feel like once I lose 15 pounds, I will celebrate.  The celebration plan will include Tiffany’s birthday, a crawfish boil,  a pitcher of Hurricanes, good times with great friends and the Rapture.  In short, I need to lose that next pound before Saturday.  Those 15 pounds are symbolic, to me…symbolic of getting past a major bump (insert fat joke here) in the road.  I feel better, I look better and I’m happier.  Not happier because I’m thinner, but happier because I feel more in control of my life.  That’s a good feeling and I’ll take it.

A look at what 15 pounds looks like:

This disgusting looking hamburger

A large domestic cat

Possible 3 month birth weight of Schwarzenegger love child

15 pound dumbbell

Three 5 pound bags of sugar

15 one pound sticks of butter (Paula Deen not included)

15 guinea pigs

10 dozen large eggs

3 average-sized Chihuahuas

DropKick Murphy Burgers and The Rude Boy - WTF and WOW Recipe Wednesday

WTF?!

WTF?!

DropKick Murphy Burgers (www.bigoven.com)

Ingredients

1.5 pounds Angus hamburger meat

8 slices peppered bacon

4 slices medium cheddar cheese

Hamburger buns

¼ red or sweet onion

1 can Murphy’s Stout

¼ cup Worcestershire Sauce

¼ cup Texas Pete Hot Sauce

Fresh ground pepper to taste

Preparation

Slowly open up two cans of cold Murphy’s Stout.  One will go in your hamburger, the other one you will drink while you prepare and grill burgers.  Chop bacon and onion, mix w/hamburger, pepper and make 4 patties, marinate burgers in stout/hot sauce for 2 hours and grill to your liking.  Melt cheese on burgers and add condiments (jalapeño or Dijon mustard is great with this burger) and enjoy!

Naturally Murphy’s Stout is great by itself with the burgers, but you might want to try this cocktail:

The Rude Boy (www.drinkproject.com)

Ingredients

1 can of Murphy’s Irish Stout

1 ½ oz of Malibu Coconut Rum

3 oz of coffee

1 pinch of nutmet

Preparation

Keep rum in freezer for a few hours.  Take hot coffee and pour into beer glass.  Add Malibu rum.  Fill the rest of the glass with Murphy’s Irish Stout.  Be careful not to fizz.  Don’t stir.  Sprinkle nutmeg on top and serve.

“True” History Tuesday – The Amish Invented the Internet

The internet was invented by the Amish in 1973.  Jakob Vinton Cerf and his brother Isaac wanted to find a more efficient way to trade information.  One of their horses, called Ezekiel Hop and Trot was really slow.  Each time they put the harness and readied Ezekiel H & T for travel in their buggy, they knew it would be a long, long journey.  Trot. Trot. Trot.  Ezekiel H & T was the slowest horse in the world and by world, I mean 10 miles square miles of land in Pennsylvania.  Trot, Trot, Trot.  It should never take 6 hours to pick up a bag of Tostitos at the Amish Village Bake Shop.  Trot, Trot, Trot.  How in the world would they complete the chair their father had ordered them to finish today?  Trot, Trot, Trot.  Jakob and Isaac would never get to the farm of Zebediah to trade best chair staining practices.  Trot, Trot, Trot.  This was completely ridiculous. 

Jakob Vinton Cerf knew there had to be an easier way to exchange information and order Tostitos.  He dreamed of an information superhighway.  He imagined super fast moving horse and buggies with people quickly trading information like recipes, quilting techniques, churning butter and ways to fix things without using electricity. 

Then an idea came to Jakob.  He would put computers in everyone’s barn in the village.  He would make the computers out of duct tape, scrabble tiles, his mother's board for ironing, encyclopedias and twine.  Then he would connect all the computers through local networks in each computer called gateways.  All he needed to do was to use his sister’s yarn to make optical fibers, radio links and telephone lines.  It was just all about linking these gateways and then everyone would input information into the system.  Jakob unveiled his plan and all the computers at the village’s next barn raising.  The Amish immediately filmed the barn raising and put it on you tube.  Thus, the internet was born.

Gorilla Bread and Obsessive Posting

I often wonder if I’m posting on this blog too much.  Chances are the answer is yes.  However, I made a goal when I started this to post everyday for a year.  I’m big on goals.  It feels good when you complete them.  I’m on post #143 now.  I haven’t missed a day.  I was determined to try to be an unemployed overachiever.  I was a high achiever as a kid, too.  My sister and I decided, one time, to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for playing with our Barbie Dolls for the longest consecutive amount of time.  She lasted an hour and then said, “This is stupid, I’m going to watch TV.”  I continued to play.  I didn’t eat lunch.  I was a dictator.  The Barbie dolls got no breaks.  Barbie, Wonder Woman, Ken, intermittent Star Wars figures and the Sunshine Family were exhausted.  My hands were cramping from posing them throughout their giant Barbie house (really more of a commune or like the Manson Family at Spahn Ranch because there were a lot of them living them).  My sister breezed through a few times…rolling her eyes, eating cookies and calling me bonkers.  But on, I played.  It was a goal, damnit.  My mom finally ended it…it was time for dinner.  It had been the longest three hours of my life.

So I’ll keep posting.  It’s my goal.  I’m obsessive about goals.  I’m also obsessive about recipes.  I found this one yesterday and honestly can’t stop thinking about it. 

Gorilla Bread (from Paula Deen)

Ingredients

½ cup granulated sugar

3 tsp cinnamon

1 stick of butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

8 oz package of cream cheese

2 twelve oz cans of refrigerated biscuits

1 ½ cups of chopped walnuts

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon.  In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar over low heat, stirring well; set aside.  Cut the cream cheese into 20 equal cubes.  Press the biscuits out with your fingers and sprinkle each with ½ teaspoon of cinnamon sugar.  Place a cube of cream cheese in the center of each biscuit, wrapping and sealing the dough around the cream cheese.  Sprinkle ½ cup of the nuts into the bottom of the bundt pan.  Place half of the prepared biscuits in the pan.  Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, pour half of the melted butter mixture over the biscuits, and sprinkle on ½ cup of nuts.  Layer the remaining biscuits on top, sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon sugar, pour the remaining butter mixture over the biscuits and sprinkle with the remaining ½ cup of nuts.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes.  Place on plate on top and invert.

This is one of my favorite post a day sites, Stormtroopers 365.  Here are a few of my favorite photos from this site. 

Titanic Blue Cheese Turkey Meatloaf

I just finished watching CBS Sunday Morning.  They had a segment about past-life regression.  It got me to thinking…have you ever noticed how many people say they were on the Titanic when they talk about past-life regression?  Hell, Napoleon and Genghis Khan were probably on the Titanic.  Can you imagine the over compensating short-man syndrome that must have exploded between them when they met on the Poop Deck?  Cleopatra could have been aboard, too.  Drunk and making an asp of herself on the Grand Staircase. Sank because of an iceberg, my ass…the boat apparently had 3 million people on it.  It sank because it was too heavy.  Of course, there weren’t enough life boats.  How can you possibly have enough lifeboats for everyone who has ever been afraid of water, has ever read about the Titanic or seen that damn movie and who sort of believes in past-life regression?  How could the White Star Line ever plan for something like that?  You just can’t.  The maiden voyage was destined for disaster. 

You won’t be destined for disaster if you make this meatloaf.  This is another recipe from my friend, Pickles.  The first of her recipes that I posted was the Vegetarian Tiger Blood Chili.  We made the meatloaf last night, I suggest you try both recipes.  WINNING!

Blue Cheese Turkey Meatloaf

Ingredients

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

8 ounces of chopped mushrooms

1 onion (Vidalia), chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 to 3 pinches of red pepper flakes

¼ cup chicken stock

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 egg, lightly beaten

½ cup panko

6 to 8 ounces crumbled blue cheese

1 ½ pounds of ground turkey

8 ounce can of tomato sauce

1 shallot, thinly sliced

Dried onion flakes

Pepper and kosher salt to taste

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Heat olive oil in large sauté pan over medium-high heat.  Add mushrooms, onions and garlic.  Sauté until mushrooms are brown.  Stir in red pepper flakes and sauté an additional minute.  Add chicken stock and Worcestershire sauce, remove from heat and allow to cool.  In a large bowl, combine egg, panko, blue cheese and mushroom mixture.  Fold in turkey and combine.  Shape into rectangular loaf.  Spoon tomato sauce on top of the loaf and place sliced shallots on top along with dried onion flakes.  Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

I baked some asparagus as the side.  Just make yourself an aluminum foil pan, snap the ends off the asparagus, spray with olive oil, season to your liking and bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. 

Some People Should Not Dress Up as Star Wars Characters

We all have these images of ourselves that are slightly different than reality.  Reality will often smack you in the face when you look in the mirror or someone takes a casual snapshot of you eating hot wings and then tags you on Facebook.  That’s when you think, “damn, I need to lose a few pounds or shit, I need to always quickly tilt my head to the left and look quizzically toward the sky when someone pulls out their camera, because I looked really good when I did that in my 1984 glamour shot.”  It is just human nature.  We all imagine ourselves looking different.

This sort of thinking is really skewed when it involves costuming of any kind.  We really want to look exactly like the person we are imitating.  Some of us can actually pull it off…but the majority of us have no business even trying it.  As much as I want to look just like Han Solo or Princess Leia in the slave girl costume, I know I should stick with dressing up as R2D2.  I have the round shape in the middle to make it work, although not being a midget could work against me.  Below are some folks who clearly love Star Wars, but should maybe not dress up as their favorite characters.

I actually like this guy.  He seems fun to sit with during happy hour.

I actually really like this guy, too.  I may need to make that costume.

Luke Skywalker mostly gets on my nerves.  This guy's costume isn't bad, but he creeps me out.  He looks like a gay who has gone to one of those religious reconditioning camps.