Yuck, blah, oatmeal.

About two and a half years ago, I went out on one of my road-trips. I drove to Florida via New Orleans and on to North Carolina. Up to Ohio then Michigan and lastly Iowa and then home via Old Route 66. On this trip, I made a few changes in how I ate. Instead of loading up on an Egg McMuffin with a deep-fried slab of "hash brown" potatoes for breakfast, I made some instant oatmeal in the microwave in my motel room.

For lunch, I tore a page out of Jerid's playbook and went to Subway and got a sub without cheese or mayo. The bottom line is, because I was on the road for over three weeks, this change in eating became a habit. In the evening, because I wasn't automatically stopping at MacD's, or Wendy's, or Burger King, I gave my choice of dinner some thought and ended up loosing thirty pounds.

Continuing the pattern after I got back, I switched to the Quick Cooking oatmeal in the cylinder for two reasons. The first was cost, those little packets are costly per serving. The other reason was my palette was tiring of the mushy Instant type.

After consuming a package of Quick Cooking Oats, I switched to the Old Fashioned variety. Same price, still cooks up quickly in the microwave. Oatmeal, as a food, is not glamorous, but it's damned good food. It's cheap per serving, it cleans out your vascular system and it has fiber. Nuf said?

I heard all of the bull about the steel cut oatmeal, so I bought some McCann Irish. It's texture was marginally better, but the stuff seems costly as hell for oats. It also, unlike the Instant, or Quick Cooking stuff needs to be cooked for "30 minutes".

Well well, it appears that Trader Joe's has Made in the USA Steel Cut Oats for a lot less mulah than the Irish stuff.

So here we are. For daily use, I now get the store brand oatmeal at Albertsons when it's on sale of course. For $2, you get 42 Oz. of oats. That's 2 pounds, 10 Oz. of oatmeal which should supply you with a warm tummy for about about two months. Every now and then, I will have a yen for the steel cut type and will take the time to nuke the TJ's. The label says "Microwaving steel cut oats is not recommended". I say bullshit, thirty minutes on 30% works fine for this old sailor.

Next week, I may stop swearing like an old sailor and stop nuking my steel-cut in favor of making it in a pan which will take another thirty minutes to clean up.

But don't bet good money on it.

For the Love of Coffee

I love to ingest things, good things. I like food and beer and wine and chocolate chip cookies. But I really like coffee. When it's black it's practically sin free. When it's bad, or has been boiled, it can be really bad. I really like the stuff with International Irish Cream coffee creamer.

My friends George and Melinda like to make real Irish coffee. Thy perk real coffee, add some brown sugar and put in real Irish whiskey. Melinda whips real cream to top it with and it is real good. Me, I'm a tad bit lazier. I do grind my dark roast beans from Trader Joe's before dumping them in my coffee press. But when the coffee is done brewing, I just add the International Irish Cream coffee creamer and pour in some Irish whiskey. It's a bit less work, but very hard to tell from the real thing. In the event that I'm out of Irish whiskey, a very real likely-hood, bourbon whiskey is almost as good.

In fact I'm riding out a rain storm and having a tot o' Irish coffee right now, which warmed me right up and moved me to write my praises about it.

Happy Great American Smokeout Day, to me.

Today, 18 Nov. 2010 is Great American Smkeout Day. Back in 1981, I was still selling residential income property, apartment buildings, in Long Beach and on the morning of the smokeout, I was driving to the office. Some perky bastard was on the radio touting the smokeout. How if I didn't smoke today, that would be at least one more day that I would be adding to my life. I was thinking screw you, you asshole, if I wanted to hear a sermon, I'd go to church, as I was automatically shoving a Marlboro into my piehole.

I'd been ill for some time by then. I didn't know t right then but it turned out to be Cat Scratch Fever. As a doctor pointed out to me, it couldn't be CSF because I didn't have a festering scratch wound and I didn't have a fever either. Anyway, as I was groping for my lighter while driving down Second Street in the Shore, I thought to myself that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I thought gee, if I quit smoking I'd have to feel better. So I said to myself, that's it, I quit. And I did, quit. I also knew right there and then, that I was an ex-smoker, and I started to feel better immediately. I had quit smoking a thousand times, I used to kid that every night when I went to bed, that I had temperately quit smoking, at least for eight hours. Unless, maybe if I got up to pee.

I got to the office and predictably, when I got there, one of my co-workers, who had "quit" mooched a smoke off of me. We used to kid that Dave didn't quit smoking, he had quit buying.

I tossed him my pack of cigarettes and told him to keep the pack for I had quit. Naturally, he didn't have a light either, so when he bummed my lighter, I told him to keep it also. For I really know that I was an ex-smoker. It was really weird, because I did actually know that I had quit.

So enjoy the day and remember, if you don't smoke today, that would be at least one more day that you would be adding to your life.

Is The Captain Drunk?

Of course the captain is drunk, but he is not mad. A B-29 is flying low over the marina every two, or so hours. And here is photographic evidence.

I am an airplane guy. Actually I'm more of a transportation guy. Not only do I love aircraft, I took flight training for my private pilot's license a while back. I love ships, boats, cars and motorcycles. Ask my son Ed about my Norton Commandos. Want to see pictures of my turbocharged Corsa and Spyder? Have I told you about life on board a destroyer in the Navy? Get the picture?

Any way the first thing that I ever wrote about was a B-29 bomber. It was about 1947 and I was about five years old at the time. It wasn't much of a story just about how big and loud that they were. Well here it is sixty three years later and guess what. They aren't all that loud and they're not all that big to me any more. I never actually saw one in person, or in flight until now, but the thrill is as if I was still five years old and I still get a kick out of seeing the big bird.

Don't Spachcock that bird my Friend

Just pass it over to me.

I don't know who devised the Spachcock technique but he must have been a Mexican and he, or she, deserves at least two pages in the Testament of Food. Spachcocking, in case you're wondering just what in the hell I'm talking about, is the way El Pollo Loco BBQs their chickens. They lay flat on the grill so they cook fairly uniformally. I bought a chicken on Sunday and ended up braising half of it with a can of mixed veggies mad a gravy with the juices and poured the gravy over come instant mashed potatoes. Good comfort food as it was somewhat chilly on Sunday. I saved the other, Spachcocked half, and today it is in the nineties. Good BBQ weather. Let's light off the Q.

Throw the bird in a container and season with Seasoned Salt, Pepper Medley and Chipotle .

Put some fresh briquettes in the Magma, light them off etc. etc. When nice and hot place the boid on the grill and toss on a few dry Mesquite chips right outta the bag. Meanwhile soak some more chips in some water.

Let's stop and digress for a moment the rule is, pork gets Hickory. Everything else, IE Beef Fish and Chicken gets Mesquite. Commit this to memory, it will never fail you. Toin da boid occasionally to cook evenly and I swear this will be that best chicken that you ever stuffed into your piehole. If you don't agree, just send the un-used portion to me for proper disposal.

Gimme another Tollhouse Cookie

Call it a Toll House or a Chocolate Chip cookie. Call it whatever you want, just hand me the cookies, very slowly, and nobody gets hurt.

In all of the big, big world, the Great Blue Marble, Mother Earth is there anything that you stick in your pie-hole that can measure up to a chocolate chip cookie? Oh sure there are pizzas ans shrimp and lots of other delights that you can chomp on, but in my ever so humble opinion, the chocolate chip cookie is the culinary high water mark. With milk preferably or maybe a good hearty cup o' Joe. Chocolate chip cookies are like sex, there are probably no bad cc cookies, some are just better than others.

My ex-wife thrice removed IE wife number one made maybe the best I ever had. She was an OK cook, but good God almighty can that girl bake. I've asked for the recipe, but like my mother, she aint talking no matter how much I beg. I won't beg for sex but I will beg like a dog for that recipe.

The best in my opinion are with Pecans. Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake Dark Chocolate Pecan Cookies are, undoubtedly the best that you can get out of a bag from the supermarket. The store baked Albertsons CC cookies are a good go-to cookie when the munchies set in at 10:30.

Hard to believe because I do so love chocolate, the double-double chocolate cookies are actually to chocolaty. It's all a matter of balance you know.