Showing posts with label beef. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beef. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Skyscraper Day, Teriyaki Mushroom Burgers, Asian Chicken Salad, and Relax!

Skyscraper Day - Skyscraper Day is a day to appreciate and admire the world's tallest skyscrapers.


Skyscrapers are truly engineering and architectural marvels. In many crowded cities, space is in short supply, and real estate prices are ever increasing. Building "up" becomes more and more logical. As technical capabilities in construction improved, skyscrapers have become taller and taller. In addition, there is a certain prestige to have one of the tallest structures in the world in your city.

Here are the world's tallest buildings:



Teriyaki Mushroom Burgers - Laura produced some incredibly tasty teriyaki mushroom burgers Sunday afternoon. She made patties using 85% lean beef, to which she added minced garlic, minced Jalapeños, and several spices and seasonings.

While the patties grilled, Laura sautéed sliced, poached mushrooms in teriyaki sauce. She poured the mushrooms atop the patties and placed Swiss cheese atop them.

She also produced an excellent batch of oven fries.

She placed the patties atop fresh Kaiser rolls from a local deli. There was no need to add condiments! The burgers were incredible.


Asian Chicken Salad - Yesterday was Labor Day. While many traveled great distances and placed themselves in peril on crowded roadways, Laura and I stayed home and produced an enormous quantity of Asian Chicken Salad. Laura poached sliced mushrooms and prepared the noodles. I did the slicing, dicing, chopping, and mincing. Laura combined the ingredients, added seasonings, extra-virgin olive oil and Oriental rice wine vinegar, and slowly stirred everything together.

This is a recipe I developed many years ago and with which I have brought intense pleasure to a great many.

Laura took a quantity to work with her this morning. She is gifting it to a co-worker. This afternoon, when she arrives at our home, she will travel to the home of a member of our home church (Harvest Christian Center) who is recovering from an injury at home. Laura will bless her with an offering of this delicious treat.

The balance shall be savored by us throughout the week. Asian Chicken Salad is excellent as an entrée or as a side dish. It is extremely healthful and very low in sodium, fat, and cholesterol. It is also very time- and labor-intensive to produce. If you wish to make some, you will find the recipe on this blog under the Recipes link on the left.

Relax! - Relax and enjoy these videos!




Tuesday, August 13, 2013

National Filet Mignon Day

National Filet Mignon Day - National Filet Mignon Day is celebrated by eating and serving filet mignon.

Learn how to cook it.



Monday, November 19, 2012

Birria - (Please see Sunday's post for imagery and ingredients for this wonderful dish!) Last evening, we enjoyed burritos made from the birria Laura produced earlier that day. It was absolutely amazing! We ate with great relish, and still there remains a great quantity for future meals! Laura enjoys tending to the pot while creating such wonderful food, so I am petitioning her to make birria often—beef, pork, and chicken—and maintain a goodly supply in the freezer for easy access whenever we wish to enjoy one of the many uses to which this wonderful food can be put!

"My Name Is Earl" - A few days ago, I (reluctantly...nervously... anticipatorily) shared with Laura that I had become a devotée of "My Name Is Earl." She was incredulous—very nearly as incredulous as I had been when I admitted this to myself!

I cannot recall how I came to first view an episode, but I am relatively certain it was by accident. For some reason, I had always imagined it to be a reality show—such as are rife on television these days. With the exception of "Cops," I eschew all such shows with a vigor not generally associated with choosing television programming.

Once I had seen a few minutes of the pilot, however, I quickly determined that this was a show that I would thoroughly enjoy!



"My Name Is Earl" is an American television comedy series created by Greg Garcia that was originally broadcast on the NBC television network from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, in the United States. It was produced by 20th Century Fox Television and starred Jason Lee as the title character.

Most episodes from the first season, then only a few from the rest, begin with Earl presenting the premise of the series:

"You know the kind of guy who does nothing but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks? Well, that was me. Every time something good happened to me, something bad was always waiting round the corner: karma. That's when I realized that I had to change, so I made a list of everything bad I've ever done and one by one I'm gonna make up for all my mistakes. I'm just trying to be a better person. My name is Earl."

The series stars Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee, Jaime Pressly, Eddie Steeples and Nadine Velazquez (Lee and Suplee had also worked together on the film Mallrats more than ten years prior).

Earl J. Hickey (Lee) is a petty criminal and ne'er-do-well, living in the fictional rural county of Camden, whose winning $100,000 lottery ticket is lost when he is hit by a car while he celebrates his good fortune. Lying in a hospital bed, under the influence of morphine, he develops a belief in the concept of karmic retribution when he hears about karma during an episode of Last Call with Carson Daly. Convinced he has to turn his life around to survive, Earl gives himself over to the power of karma. As his first step of a makeshift twelve-step program to fix his misdeeds, Earl makes a list of every bad thing and every person he has wronged and commences efforts to fix them all. After doing a first good deed, he finds the $100,000 lottery ticket that was previously lost. Seeing this as a sign of karma rewarding him for his commitment, Earl uses his newfound wealth to do more good deeds according to his list.

As he continues to perform good deeds, Earl's motives initially come across as shallow and selfish—that he is only doing good to improve his karma and by extension his own life. However, Earl begins to develop a genuine sense of morality and ethics, refusing to participate in illegal or immoral activities—though sometimes finding himself in very awkward situations.

In many cases, Earl discovers that his crimes and misdemeanors had far more repercussions than he could have imagined, and that complete fixes in those cases would require far more trial and effort than could have been imagined. Yet he would also find that repairs would also have deeper and more layered results as well, bringing the realm of the show into the religious and spiritual as well as comedic.

The series generally ended its episodes with Earl and Randy talking about things that have nothing to do with the rest of the show before saying good night and turning in for a night's sleep. In many cases, these conversations take place in their shared motel room bed.

I asked Laura to watch just one episode before declaring that I had gone fully mad, and—sweet woman that she is, she agreed!

We watched an episode named "The Bounty Hunter," in which Juliette Lewis plays the girl Earl dumped for Joy years earlier. Jessie has become a bounty hunter and tries to track Joy down. Earl feels responsible for the mess, until Joy tells him how they really hooked up.

Laura immediately fell under the thrall of "My Name is Earl," and we make viewing a few episodes a nightly ritual!

Notable guest stars:
Trace Adkins
David Arquette
Sean Astin
Dave Attell
Roseanne Barr
Barbara Billingsley
Ewen Bremner
Brett Butler
Larry Joe Campbell
Duane Chapman
Gil Christner
Carson Daly
Charles S. Dutton
Jenna Elfman
Erik Estrada
Morgan Fairchild
Jon Favreau
Faith Ford
Leo Fitzpatrick
Ben Foster
Courtney Gains
Johnny Galecki
Danny Glover
Adam Goldberg
Seth Green
Kadeem Hardison
Jon Heder
Paris Hilton
Clint Howard
Eric Allan Kramer
John Leguizamo
Juliette Lewis
Faizon Love
Jane Lynch
Jenny McCarthy
Norm Macdonald
Howie Mandel
Marlee Matlin
Alyssa Milano
Katy Mixon
Chloë Grace Moretz
Niecy Nash
Timothy Olyphant
Andrea Parker
Jason Priestley
Michael Rapaport
Burt Reynolds
Geraldo Rivera
Chelcie Ross
Amy Sedaris
Jane Seymour
Dax Shepard
Jimmi Simpson
Christian Slater
Kevin Sussman
Christine Taylor
Michael Teutul
Paul Teutul, Jr.
Paul Teutul, Sr.
Melody Thomas Scott
Joan Van Ark
Jerry Van Dyke
Miguel Varoni
Michael Waltrip
John Waters
Betty White
Matthew Willig

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Where's the Beef?, Mommy Dearest, -and- Extra Credit


Where's the Beef? - Ted Nugent rips Paul McCartney for firing burger-eating roadies
Mommy Dearest - mother keeps daughter prisoner without sunshine
Extra Credit - student stages robbery to wipe bad grades

On this day in history: June 19, 1999 - While taking a walk, horror author Stephen King is struck by a van piloted by a distracted Bryan Smith. King's extensive injuries (broken leg, broken hip, lacerated scalp and collapsed lung) remanded him to a hospital bed for three weeks. Smith would later die in his sleep on Stephen King's birthday.

Born on this day in history: June 19, 1834 - Charles H. Spurgeon (1834 - 1892) preacher. His humorous sermons at the Metropolitan Tabernacle drew congregations of 6,000; wrote collections of pithy sayings, "John Ploughman's Talk," 1869.

Today's Video: The Puzzle





For last evening's meal, I made steamed broccoli, brown rice with mushrooms, and pork steaks. I made a marinade with tequila, teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, cornstarch, and crushed red pepper. I cut two thick pork steaks from Sunday's pork butt and marinated them for two hours. I sautéed the steaks in the marinade, which thickened into a delicious glaze. The remaining glaze from the sauté pan was drizzled over the rice. It was a delightful meal.