pot roast ... err beef burgundy ... bah one of the two!

I made a pot roast yesterday that came out very good. I didn't get any pictures because 1) my camera was low on battery and 2) i forgot. The basic recipe is the same one I use for pot roast most often. Chuck Roast, seared with saltnpepper, onions and broth with a couple bay leaves and a few random spices into the oven at 350 for an hour with a cover, remove the cover for an hour and then add veggies for the last hour covered. Veggies included carrots, potatoes, rutabaga (yellow turnip), and mushrooms. Remove everything, fish out the mushrooms and set aside ... strain the juices into a pan and reduce and thicken slightly with corn starch then reintroduce the mushrooms to the finished gravy. The variation this time was I seperated the potatoes out of the veggie mix after cooking and mashed them to serve under the gravy and serve like a beef burgundy rather than a north eastern pot roast dinner. I also went down the burgundy line by adding about 1/3 a bottle of pinot noir to the broth to begin with and another 2/3 cup during reduction of the sauce. As a bonus I served the remaining wine with dinner (to michelle who will actually drink wine, I won't) and she liked it( doublt odd is that it's a red and shes not fond of reds in general).

cookies.... more cookies .. and did i mention cookies?

Since Thursday the thing to do around our house has been .. mix, roll, buy ingredients for, cool, bake, package, sample, burn (my fault there) and decorate cookies. I think we are approaching 20 types... not dozen but types and usually atleast 2 or 3 dozen of each type. Here are some pics.


Cookies cooling (some biscotti on the bottom there)


Some finished in a box waiting to be divided amongst the shipping containers.



Just so the doggies aren't completely left out these were leftover spritz cookies that Michelle put carob drops on and baked. Lu and Gideon can't be left out of the cooking ya know!

so umm maybe i need to update this more... Green chile turkey stew

I seem to be having issues keeping this up to date....

After having had a couple of thanksgiving meals (a small one i cooked at home for just us and one at a friend's house) the thought of turkey was starting to get old but I still had some turkey meat leftover. I decided to make some stew.

Green Chile Turkey n Dumplings
the recipe isn't real exact .... potatoes, carrots, onion, green beans, chicken broth, leftover turkey, salt, pepper, bay leaves, thyme, parsley, Bisquick... umm some other stuff if you have it ...




Green Chile Turkey N Dumplings


A single serving

bah! updates .. i always forget... some food!

Friday night was bad on the healthy eating scale but so good on the tasty meter. Salt Lick in Round Rock. Shorter drive now yay! .. and booooo for wastelien and wallet.


This weekend we went to Boerne (you might think that is pronounced like born ... but you would be wrong .. its bernie, liek Weekend at Bernies) for a yarn/wool thingy at the fairgrounds there. Kinda neat but lame too, no easily accessible llamas to pet, what's the point? While there we had some decent sausages at a restaurant called the Dodging Duck. Really good pretzel too. Before leaving for Boerne we stopped at the farm stand that is usually in Jonestown on saturday mornings but this week was at their farm, love their fresh veggies. Check them out at http://angelvalleyfarms.com/. Sunday evening I cooked some of the veggies and a pork chop (pic below)


Roasted Beets onions and tomatoes. Tomatoes were topped with an asian greens mix that had been saute'd with a small amount of butter and onions. Pork chop was a thick cut butterfly loin with olive oil salt and pepper.


I worked from home on Monday and wanted to use up some meatballs I got at IKEA and one of my favorite meatball recipes aside from spaghetti is meatball stroganoff. This isn't really a classic stroganoff recipe but it does have sour cream in the sauce and looks kinda brownish gray. Tasty though. I was out of egg noodles (my favotrite stroganoff starch) so I made some from scratch and they came out fairly good, next time i will run them through the pasta press one more time after they have been cut fromt eh sheets to make them thinner but the flavor was decent. Pic of finished noodles drying below

weekend food, no pics ...

Saturday
Breakfast: oatmeal and grapefruit
Lunch: Kobe, VERY good but expensive, we shared and entree and still paid about $40.
Dinner: I forget, probably ate though

Sunday
Breakfast: umm, juice maybe?
Lunch: Dim Sum at Chinatown in north Austin (Mopac and Greystone) awesome, but again expensive
Dinner: umm, continued to digest lunch

Working from home... oh look a kitchen!!!

Working from home has a lot of perks and a few minuses... One of the great eprks is that my kitchen is like 30 feet away. Today's breakfast woudl normally have been something snagged from teh fridge or more than likely fast food on teh way in to the office but today I made myself 2 breakfast tacos from fresh tortillas from HEB, eggs, cheddar cheese, leftover hash (butternut squash, potatoes, onions and elgin sausage) and some hatch chiles. Lunch was another shot at ratatouille which came out much mroe stew like and less soupy. yay for working from home!


hatchy bfast tacos


ratatouille v2.0

Freebirds

Those of you in Austin (hmm ok so the one person who reads this might be in Austin) will probably have heard of Freebirds. They are one of the measures for lunchtime overstuffed burritos. They make have more options and the environment inside their restaurants is much warmer than Chipotle. While I was in the Boston area working for the past 9 months or so apparently someone finally pulled their heads outa the sand and opened a new Freebirds just down the street from my office. Makes life much better when there is a close by lunch place that isn't Taco Deli, Mangia or the Cafe (ok so if you know anything about Austin, there are a ton of other close by restaurants near IBM on Burnet, but I wanted something fast and good and NOT McDonalds. Next time I think a 1/2 bird is in order though because the full Freebird (not the Monster) is just more than I can comfortably eat. Gone are the days when I could eat that much. The other bit of good news is the same new shopping center that has Freebirds also has a Firehouse subs. That is on the list for later this week, they make very decent subs, though if it were a Deleware Subshop I would have been describing a steak and cheese to you and expressing my thoughts about the proper way to make one instead of spouting off about burritos.

Lasagna - again! but homemade

Sorry for there being a lacking of pictures... This one would have been a good candidate but my camera was outa batteries and i didn't think to use my phone, was hungry!

Made lasagna in my Le Crueset cobalt blue terrine dish. This dish is awesome for making a small lasagna because it fits exactly one lasagna noodle in length and width and with toppings between 4 oan 5 stacked up. Makes 4 very nice servings.

Recipe:
5 lasagna noodles cooked and drained
1/2 lb provolone cheese (i used sliced from deli)
8 oz ricotta cheese
1 egg
italian spices
salt/pepper
1 jar Newman's Own Italian sausage and onion sauce
random shredded italian cheese (maybe 1/2 a cup)
1/2 cup freshly grated parm


Mix the ricotta with egg and seasonings. Layer everything into the terrine making sure you have enough provolone and sauce to cover the top. Sprinkle a bit of the mixed cheeses on top of the sauce (it browns so nicely. CHuck in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes and then raise heat to 450 for 10... this browns the top nicely ... let sit for 10 minutes and serve.

home and ratatouille

Flew home on Friday. Was supposed to take from 12:26pm eastern to about 5:30pm central... thanks to Delta leaving us sitting on the runway for 30 minutes of my 35 minute layover... I missed my connection to Austin and had to take a later flight. Got in about 9pm central. Went from teh airport directly to Kerby Lane restaurant on 183, their new location is to damn new and bright and ugh .. but the staff was still tattoo'd and pierced and nice. The food was also good. Got up this morning and went to the farm stand and got some very fresh squashed and peppers among other things, went to O'Leander restaurant in Leander for lunch and then back home with the dogs. For dinner we had homemade ratatouille.



ratatouille in a small dish

rainy, uneventful weekend

This weekend was spent trying to get over a cold and packing/cleaning for my move home. I can't express how happy I am to be heading home. I miss my life. It will be good to get to see my wife daily and my dogs and be able to cook in my kitchen. I don't think I appreciated any of the above previously. Oh and the restaurants.... ones that I know and trust. There are a lot of great places to eat here in the Boston area but it is not a lot of fun to eat out by yourself, especially when the one person you like to take to new places is nowhere near. Today is my last day of work in Westford, MA. I move out of my apartment tomorrow, go spend a few days with my family in NH and then fly out for Austin (via Atlanta, ICK!) on Friday afternoon. Doesn't seem like 9 months have gone by since I got here but at the same time it's been a very rough time as well. Time to go home!!!!!!

Caffe il Cipresso - one last time

Went to a little Italian cafe in Tyngsboro again last night. Probably the last chance I will get to eat there before I leave for home (Austin). This restaurant is one of the things I am going to miss most after leaving, along with the weather (yes I even like winter). The food is amazing. Probably the best ravioli I have ever had and a great variety of sauces to go with them. Have a look at their menu. The special ravioli last night was a lobster ravioli with a sun dried tomato cream sauce with parm and shrimp. Absolutely amazing combination.

Legal Seafood

Went to Legal Seafood tonight for dinner. Food was great as always. Had their Lobster bake which starts with clam chowder and then you get a lobster (1.25lbs) about half a pound of muscles, a little sausage piece and an ear of corn. Unfortunately my pictures didn't come out very good so you get an ok picture of the chowder (which is great) and a picture of the Lobster and all half eaten...



cup of legal seafood clam chowder


half eaten lobster bake!

Fall Begins! (ok so thats tomorrow)

Since I have to work tomorrow and a new person is coming and needs to be trained and showed around town some it's likely I won't get a chance to make food for Mabon. I made a squash & apple soup tonight. It came out fairly good but I'd have been happier with it if I had a good food processor or better yet a nice blender. Just needed to be smoother.


Squash & Apple Soup


1 butternut squash (peeled, cleaned and diced)
2 macintosh apples (peeled and diced)
1 large onion diced
2 tbsp butter
12 oz chicken stock (ok veggies COULD use veg broth i guess)
1 cup apple cider
sour cream
majoram, rosemary, pepper, salt and parsley

Saute the onions in butter and then add squash and apples. Slowly add the liquids and spices. Simmer for about an hour. Mash or blend and serve with dollop of sour cream.

Berticcu's revisited

Decided I didn't wanna cook tonight and I didn't want fast food so I stopped for Italian at Bertucci's on the way home. Got an appetizer of 4 meatballs and sauce, main meal of a pizza Margharita and for dessert their seasonal special strawberries and cream. The dessert was actually strawberries on top of vanilla pudding with some really nice whipped cream on top. All in all it was very good. pics below!






The lighting was terrible for a bit and I didn't get a good pic until I hat eaten 2 pieces already.

Dinner!

Okay so dinner tonight wasn't exciting but here is a pic anyhow. Pretty
uneventful day, cept there are only 2 weeks left of work here!!!!!!!!!!



Panera French bread with butter and a turkey dinner from Boston Market.

culinary boredom

This weekend wasn't terrible for food but there weren't any meals worthy of talking about. Ate at my mom's house most of the weekend and that's just always same old same old. Not usually bad really but nothing spectacular that you;d look forward to. Sometimes bad.... not this weekend. Had some chicken stew, french toast, buiscuits and gravy (ok i had maple syrup on my biscuits). Beyond that I think I had a sandwich from a gas station deli (not one of the packages sandwiches, but an actual deli that happens to be located ina gas station). Uneventful.....

I put a new app on my iPhone. Lifetimer. I then put in the time and date for my flight back to austin and it tell sme that I have 18 days and 2 hours as of about now... yay!

Glenview Restaurant and Pub

Dinner was excellent tonight. Not gourmet but you don't go to a pub looking for gourmet food, at least you shouldn't. I got potato skins and a bacon cheeseburger. Both tasted excellent and the portions were huge. I ate 1/3 of the appetizer and less than half of the burger and the waitress came back often enough that I felt comfortable with the attention but not smothered. To top it all off this was had for less than $16 before tip with a soda that had free refills.


Loaded Potato Skins


Bacon Cheeseburger


I only have one complaint and this is more about a trend than the actual restaurant. Potato skins are supposed to be made from leftover parts of baked potatoes that you have previously used to make another entree. The potato skins at Glenview are of the type that I have seen more and more where a baked potato is cut in half and a very little bit of potato is removed for create a small resevoir for cheese and other toppings. This results in a potato skin that is HUGE and very filling. The point of an appetizer is not to make someone unable to eat their dinner but to provide soemthing to snack on while the entree is prepared. These newer generation of potato skins are a meal in themselves and serve not only to waste ingredients but to cause a lot of undue waste. Did i mention that they tasted extremely good?

people in general just suck

Yesterday I was having some issues connecting to my home chat server and shell account across secure connections. I made the mistake of trying telnet (which I had forgotten I had open still for some insane reason). I got connected via telnet and then 30 minutes later someone put a phishing site up on my server. I am 2000 miles away from home so I can't even get to my system to reinstall it and make sure all is well. I had to move netwitch to a hosting service where I have minimal resources available. I seriously hate people....

In a month or so when I get back home I will pull it all apart and decide if I need a server at home anymore and if I don't will move my entire site to a more static hosting service and whatnot. BAH!!!!!!!!!! Oh and before i shutdown I did look around enough to see that the intrusion came from AOL so yay AOL!

bah!

So as much as I was looking forward to Michelle's visit I was dreading today. I just got back from the airport and She's flying back to Austin. The good news is that I am headed that way myself in just a few weeks, but not for a visit. On Oct 3rd I am flying home to Austin (Leander really) for good. No more visiting home, that will be what we call flying back up here on vacations and whatnot. BAH! I hate this assignment more and more each passing moment it seems. I am glad I got to spend time with my family and all and it was excellent to get some New England weather but I miss my life.

Was a family reunion of sorts this Saturday and I took a few pictures but they didn't come out very good. But oh well... such is life. The day was very nice and as always at any family event there was more food than people and most of it was very good, well I say most, I don't think anything was bad but i didn't get to sample all of it. Here is a pic that will mostly just serve to make me more homesick... slightly out of focus but... ehh

boston sight seeing

Went into Boston today with Michelle. was a good day, went to a soap shop (stinky!!!! but in a clean way just strong). Went to Faneiul Hall and grabbed lunch (late) and then spent awhile at the Aquarium. Here are some pics.


Michelle getting ready to take a pic of the Harbor Seals.


A skyscraper i thought would make a good pic.


A church near Coply Square. The Old South Church.


Cute Penguin!


Neat Jelly fish.


Harbor Seal performing for the few spectators.

Pub lunch

Stopped at a Pub on the way back from doing laundry today. Ok... so maybe it was not quite on the way but close. The food was actually quite good and I will be going back, should have been eating at this place for weeks/months now as it's within walking distance from my apartment. Problem is that it's always very busy and patience isn't one of my strong points.

Had nachos with teh works and a scallop and clams platter. Everythign was very good.

plumbing, motorcycles and broken computers

Over this weekend I helped my Dad (well mostly I did it) finish switching our house from having copper water pipes go under the house to having Pex piping inside the house. They are switching from a furnace that kept the under of the house slightly above freezing to a wood pellet stove that does not push hot air through the same duct work. I am NOT a plumber and nor do I ever want to be, there was some soldering that needed to be done and I hate it. I understand how to do it but soldering existing pipes is an absolute pain in the ass. There were some leaks which needed to be repaired but all in all it went sorta smoothly. Yay completed chore! Now I just hope it holds because after I leave in October to go back to Austin I am not making any house calls to fix it.

On the positive side of things, Michelle got an unexpected second shot (had some clutch and throttle issues the first time like most new riders)at the motorcycle riding class (the riding portion) this weekend and passed! so now all she needs to do is get her license. Let's hope this is the last time she managed to get one of these from a bike though .. ouch!


Michelle unfortunately managed to gather enough negative karma (you would think that bruise would have been enough bad karma used up, what have you been doing Michelle?) to kill her laptop somehow though. Monday morning when she booted it up she got the dreaded "invalid partition table" message. You have to love Microsoft's inability to do things safely, they would never admit it was an update that did this but Sunday night the last thing she did was process some "critical" updated before shutting down. Ugh, wish I had been there to help fix it ...

Hmm, oh and i went to The 99 Restaurant for dinner last night and got the Captain's Platter. Better than the Captain's Feast at Red Lobster but I missed the cheesy rolls, though the chowder was a good addition.

lasagna!

Went to caffe il cipresso for dinner tonight. Great lasagna. Unfortunately the picture of the cream of broccoli soup did not come out so you just get to see the lasagna.

made dinner again, must be feeling better

I must be feeling much better, I have been feeling like cooking all day.

above was improvised from what was in my fridge...

spaghetti, oyster mushrooms, onions, diced tomatoes, crushed pepper
salt, pepper, Italian spices, touch of soy. all sauted in a pan together
and serves with a little parm.... nice and spicy the crushed
peppers are the ones in a jar not the dried crushed ones. used a couple
teaspoons full for 2 servings

tasty :)

Dinner NE style!

Hannaford Supermarkets will steam the lobster for you and at 9.99 a lb (for 1.25 to 1.5 lb lobsters) it's not cheap but how often am in this area. Hopefully I will make a trip over to the coast to get some even fresher. mmmmmmmm

wolf .. dog.. .. umm wolfdogs!

I went to my parents again this weekend and on SUnday (today) my sister took me to a wolfdog rescue/sanctuary. Anyone who knows me knows that I adore wolves and dogs of all kinds and as heartbreaking as it is to see these magnificent animals in enclosures rather than running free they are large enclosures (I think maybe an acre in size). The alternative is death so it is also heartwarming that someone takes time and energy to help them lead lives that are maybe not the best but far far far better than what they have been previously offered. This sanctuary currently has about 76 animals all wolf hybrids of varying degrees. Here are some images below.





This dog/wolf was so friendly he wanted to say hello to anyone who was ever gonna see the picture. I got licked right after this.

slowly starting to feel better

So I am slowly starting to get better, I don't know if it is the additional allergy medicine that is helping, or the prilosec (acid reducer) or perhaps I am just getting used to the feeling in my throat... but I ate an asian salad with steak on it for lunch today which has lots of greens and sprouts which had in teh past given me a bit of trouble in teh throat and am msotly ok and I had a bagel this morning (untoasted). I have to be careful how i eat (slowly and not to big bites) but that is good anyhow. I am hoping this is recovery and I cna get back to normal and perhaps back to diet or at least good food when i want to, because hatch season is starting!!!!!! And I am stuck up ehre far far far away from any tasty fresh hatch peppers .... so sad!

gah! long time no post...

So I have been a little sick recently and it's frustrating because I am not sure what is going on. I went and saw a Dr at a walk-in clinic and got put on Flonase. That takes days to kick in and it's a frustrating problem. Constantly feeling like something is stuck just below my wind pipe. The more i think about it the worse it gets and the more i try and "fix" it by swallowing or coughing and essentially just making it worse. Consequently I haven't been eating anything interesting or really been following my diet very well. Sucks. But as of today I am trying REALLY REALLY hard to ignore it since it doesn't really cause me any dire problems. Other than triggering panic attacks about not being able to breath (illogical since the obstruction feels like its below that area).

Good news is that this assignment is MA is almost over .. and Michelle is coming to visit in less than a month. And once she leaves I will have less than a Month to go before I do too. I will miss being able to see my family but being back in Austin will be so nice... I can't wait.

vacation good! ....

hmmm i should have probably updated the blog while I was on vacation .. but I mostly avoided all things computer related the whole time ... so you get the summary .. very high level

not necessarily in order...
flight, sleep, shopping, food, dogs, wife, shopping, airport, new bbq (big green egg, pics sometime), food, San Antonio, Alamo, Zoo, River Walk, CountyLine bbq, pics, pics, more pics, dogs, sleep, sleep, tv, shopping, sight seeing, mow the lawn (what i get for going on vacation to my own damn house), get jeep inspected, to hot for the bike. sleep .. more sleep.... tv, food ....

think that's about it. I have some pics to go through and gather together and will maybe post a slide show if I get ambitious. Good vacation but now back to work .. bleah!

off for vacation as of tomorrow

I will be on vacation from the 17th to 29th. Going home to Austin to see the wife and dogs. Taking my niece with me and a friend from Denmark is coming to visit. Should be a good couple of weeks. Not a very interesting post today but well I might not get to making may for a few days...

not a very interesting weekend

Didn't eat anything special or interesting this weekend and didn't stick strictly to my diet, though I am relaxing it slightly due to vacation coming up. Carbs give me cramps if i jump back into them to fast so I am eating a little bit each day now just to get used to them a little. I still won't be jumping into eating a LOT of carbs all the time but I am going to Austin, I need to be able to eat tortilla chips for queso!

I did see a moose this weekend but was to slow in finding my camera (hey, I was driving at the time). He wasn't HUGE like some get and he wasn't real old because he may have had a 3 to 4 foot rack. The most impressive thing I found about him was that his coat was a real deep chocolate brown and he looked like someone had just groomed him with a horse brush... I am used to seeing dusty tick infested Moose lately and this was a great change. Just as I found the camera he turned off into the woods and was gone.

level 70!

OK, if you play online games and WoW specifically that will mean a little bit ... otherwise just imagine sitting at a computer for several days without getting up for anything but necessities and it will give you an idea of how much time investment this is. I am not an expert at this game so add a few more days to that. I got to level 70 last night before midnight and then went into some major Gold dept to a couple friends to get my flying mount (the swift one!), thanks Rick and Sherry, I'll get ya paid back in a few... umm i'd like to say days but I suspect it's gonna be weeks.

long weekend, uneventful holiday

I spent most of the weekend trying hard not to mess up my diet and contending with some strange and annoying muscle pain in my neck, back and left arm. It's eased up considerably but is obnoxious because it tends to come and go a little, so once I relax and start to move normally again i move my next just to far and it's back again. Hopefully another day or two of this and it will be gone.

Nothing special for food over the weekend to report. I didn't make anything at all interesting. The most interesting thing I did was go see Wanted at the movies and I enjoyed it but wasn't blown away like I am sure I would have been if I went to see something else. On well another time. I'd suggest it if you wanted something mindless with a lot of blood and action. Just make sure you have a healthy ability with suspension of disbelief. The physics in this movie leave a lot of room to be questioned.

I didn't goto any of the fireworks displays, which si sorta sad being just 40 minutes outside Boston. They put on a great show and I did see it on TV and it was great. But dealing with that large of a crowd never seems appealing to me, and less so when I haven't got anyone to share it with.

Played lots of WoW ... for thsoe of you who know what that means .. i got my rogue to level 69, only one more level to go before it becomes even more pointless :)

Greek Burgers

The following picture sucks ... stupid pita bread would not stay folded over for a picture. I did not have any toothpicks to fix it with.

basic recipe ... didn't measure .. sorry

ground beef, yogurt, curry powder, black pepper, oregano, egg

mix it all up and grill, though I had to pan fry.

serve on pita bread with lettuce. Would be good with Tzatziki Sauce but I didn't have any.

experiment

Jalapeño poppers are something I can't normally have on this diet. The chilis themselves aren't terrible on the carb meter but the breading is. Last night I decided to try using parm cheese like I do with fish and chicken to simulate a fried food and appease a craving. The results... sorta a success. I could not get the cheese to stick to the jalapeño pods but since I was stuffing half a jalapeño, the cheese stuck to the cream cheese (with green olives) very nicely. The whole thing deep fried fairly nicely blistering the jalapeño skin but not burning it and causing the parm cheese to turn golden brown on top. I'd call it success other than the fact that it just didn't come out the way I hoped. I was hoping for a crust of parm all around the pod and stuffing not just over the top. No pics, they weren't very pretty and I was hungry and greasy. No need to get oil all over the camera for something that isn't quite figured out yet.

food, ever so not interesting but at least not tasteless

Ok So i have praised this diet for having food I like. The problem... food i LOVE isn't really on the diet. Pizza ... french fries .. bread in general. So I'm changing things a little and now that I have completed over a week of the transition phase and can actually have a few carbs again I am going to relax the diet one or two nights a week (depending on schedule) and have a sane amount of whatever I want and correct the following day. The good news is that I know from past experiences that if I binge on carbs I will feel like absolute hell within just a half hour to an hour. Not really pleasant and a great way to curb eating a whole plate of cheese fries or a pizza.

Food eaten... I'm starting to see a pattern here .. hamburgers seem to be a staple when I goto my parents because I think my mom doesn't really understand what a carb is. I've explained it multiple times and all she hears is "hamburger by itself is safe." I'm seriously starting to wonder if she just fears learning something new or doesn't listen when people talk. I know things slip a little when you get older but she's only 60.. not that old and I have seen other signs of oddness in her memory over the past few months. For instance she was telling me how one of my uncles used the money gotten from some antiques to buy a couple of trucks, but I happen to know he did not have those items until close to 10 years after those trucks were bought. Her sense of time is completely slipping... and I thought I was the one doing chemical experiments on my own brain for a few years...

Well, I should think about actually working for awhile so this is short and not all that interesting .. sorry...

Food summary: eggs, bacon, coffee, hamburger patty, hamburger patty, salad, hamburger patty, shrimp appetizer, steak & steamed broccoli, wedge salad, almonds .... (in no real order aside from the steak was Sunday afternoon between lunch time and dinner time).

Had the steak (ribeye) at Outback in southern Nashua, NH. The flavor was pretty good but they overcooked it and considering I had asked for medium to medium rare and got medium well to well ... it wasn't just a small amount of overcooking. I didn't send it back because I didn't want to be there for another 20 minutes on top of the already long meal (long is fine, but eating alone sometimes gets WAY boring at a restaurant).

posts reducing in frequency

This diet has made my food choices far less interesting and much easier to stay "on diet" so I haven't been posting as much. But just in case anyone cares, I have been sticking to the diet pretty well. A couple small slip ups but nothing terrible, mostly just a little sugar in coffee or a couple croutons on a salad. The good news is that the diet is starting to work a little, no lost weight that i can tell, that will actually take quite a bit of time as i don't have or want a scale that can weight me. I am starting to increase energy levels though and getting out of bed, though still not pleasant, is easy. Never had a physical hard time of it, but I had been just dreading it and been way tired every morning. The past few nights I haven't felt like sleeping till about 1am and been awake by 8am and unable to get back to sleep. So all immediate signs are good and I expect I will fall off the wagon on this diet soon enough but will not stay that way long, this over weight thing is getting way old. I'll never be fit but being able to sit comfortable in my own damn Jeep would be nice.

Diet Dr. Pepper

One of the few bright spots on this diet is that I can have (within reason) any meats that i want. I can eat most green vegetables and don't have to worry to terribly much about most cheese (well not American .. that's loaded with sugar). It only takes a few days to start craving sweet (I'll not even mention bread and potatoes because that is likely to be the breaking point sooner or later). For the dessert fix there is Sugar free jello, add a little bit of whipped cream and that is very satisfying most of the time, but it's not really that sweet. The last time i did this diet low carb dieting was all the rage and I could find tons of chocolate alternatives that tasted mostly right. Those options have dried up as the fad has died. So I'm stuck with this terribly craving for something really sweet .... the solution is found is a very strange place. Diet Dr. Pepper If you haven't had anything sweet in a few days and this is all that is around it absolutely tastes like liquid pleasure, though with a slightly unpleasant after taste. Luckily you get used to that fairly fast.

Meals yesterday
Breakfast: coffee
Lunch: Salad (with lots of chicken and bacon bits, real bacon bits so good)
Snack: Diet Dr Pepper
Dinner: Boston Market, turkey, creamed spinach (few carbs) and green beans
Snack: almonds, strawberry jello

healthy.. REALLY

Today was a good day on my diet, I still wanted some starches but I managed to avoid it.

Breakfast: Eggs and bacon
Lunch: 2 cheeseburgers minus buns at mcdonalds
Dinner: salad (see pic)



Salad: lettuce, 2 eggs, broccoli, celery with cream cheese, italian dressing. A few carbs in the dressing and cream cheese but no more than 5 or so. This is a really good meal for me .. though I'd like to add a few pieces of chicken breast or even some salmon.

midsummer and a snack

It's midsummer so umm happy midsummer!

Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: salad (greens, eggs, chicken w/vinegar and oil)
Snack: Almonds, coffee
Dinner: Chicken and some broccoli
Snack: See below!


Low carb eating can be so strange. This is by far NOT a great snack but it doesn't break my diet.


Pepperoni (thick slices) and provolone cheese

a new start ... goodbye carbs for awhile

Well ... eating healthier since i started the blog has actually been happening most of the time. But I need to lose some weight because I just feel like crap all the time. The only diet that has ever worked for me was Atkins (a slight variant that allows a little bit of good carbs). I came home slightly early from work last night and went through the apartment and bagged up everything that I will need to get rid of to avoid carbs. I also stopped and bought some food... this is a more expensive way to eat but hopefully, like before, I can some weight and start feeling better and then get more exercise. So I won't detail yesterday's food as it is slightly contradictory...

Got up this morning and made 3 fried eggs and had 2 slices of ham. I am already wanting some bread or potatos but I gotta get through this first week before any of that is even an option.

visitors and Italian food

Tuesday was a slow day for getting anything accomplished. We had visitors in the office and a few meetings and lunch out at Bertucci's. Was a productive day business relationship wise but not so productive on the normal workload. Well worth it though as meeting people face to face is extremely important. Hard to get companies to cough up the cash to do it so we take advantage of every opportunity. Ended up at work early and leaving a bit late but not terribly so in either direction, with a long lunch in the middle.

Breakfast: coffee and danish
Lunch: Bertucci's Chicken Parm w/Penne
Dinner: Chips & ranch dip, banana, coffee

greasy skin and more chicken and dumplings

Tried out my chicken N dumplings recipe again. It was good but not quite as chicken flavored as before which is odd because i started with raw chicken and braised it for an hour and a half before making the recipe. It's good and I suspect that by tomorrow when i reheat it it will be great. Just struck me as odd that since I started from scratch this time I ended up with less flavor. As you will see I also added carrots.



Chicken N Dumplings

I took the rubbery skin off the chicken thighs and laid it out on a baking sheet and salted it a little and then broiled it for a few minutes. You can see the results below. Not very healthy but extremely tasty.



Broiled Chicken Skin



Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: Chicken Panang Curry
Dinner: Chicken N Dumplings, coffee, and some chicken skin

bleargh...

Spent the weekend with my folks for Father's Day and to help my dad clean out his truck. The damage on it doesn't look real bad on the surface but there was some twisting of the frame. So we spent some time taking off personal additions (lights siren and the like)

As far as food goes.. pasta, beans, chicken .... burgers at Mcdonalds (ugh)... coffee, more coffee, some more coffee.... wasn't a foodie weekend for sure.

out of work early

Left work a bit early today so I could spend some time helping my dad find a new truck. He recently totaled his (see a post below) and is needing something to drive. Didn't find anything today but we eliminated some places!

Breakfast: Peanut Butter Toast (Corinne's fault! though its been days since we discussed)
Lunch: BK cheese burger , fries and Diet Coke (i HATE diet coke, rather have water...)
Dinner: Baked Beans

no breakfast? heh

Well today was uneventful. Work happened nothing good nothign bad, though we did have a release party that I went to for a few minutes.

Breakfast: nada
Lunch: spaghetti and Meatballs
Snack: coffee and rice crispy treat
Snack #2: cheese and crackers and a couple cookies (release party)
Dinner: Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and Dumplings

Worked from home today and decided that I needed to make lunch rather than go out. I had leftover chicken from Boston Market and at Corinne's suggestion I decided to try and make Chicken and Dumplings. I'd like to report a complete success :) tasted great and was fairly easy to do.




Chicken N Dumplings

Chicken:
1/2 chicken roasted and shredded (at least remove the bones)
1 carton free range chicken broth (4 cups i think)
salt/pepper/chili powder/garlic/Italian seasonings

Dumplings:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup ice cold water (plus some.. this is a hard one to get exact measurment)
salt


Mix all the chicken ingredients and start to simmer. I'd let it cook for about 30 minutes to get the flavors to mix nicely. Mix the dumpling ingredients in a bowl or on the counter and bring it together so that you can kneed it fairly easily (you will need to add extra water slowly so as to not get it to wet). Flour the counter and roll out the dumplings until they are about 1/4 inch thick. cut the dumplings about an inch wide and 2 inches long, or however you want them.
Drop them into the broth and let them cook for 20 minutes or so at a low boil. I then thickened the broth with a little corn starch. This dumpling recipe won't thicken the broth much.


Breakfast: banana, a pb&j sandwich, coffee
Lunch: Chicken and Dumplings
Dinner: Chef Boyardee Ravioli

deadlines, italian sandwich and chicken!

Today was the absolute deadline for a product we are working on releasing the next version of. I got involved in a very simple defect that should have been handled months ago but somehow got dropped. Simple stuff until some anal retentive gatekeeper decided to do his job now instead of 7 months ago when it was originally submitted. I can understand people upholding their standards but 2 minutes before a deadline is not the time for that when you had an opportunity to do it 7 months earlier. I doubt he agrees with me but I am fairly sure that he won't be challenging me in a contest of wills again anytime soon. I make a somewhat blunt impression on people who piss me off.


Breakfast: banana, croissant

Snack: coffee and pound cake

Lunch: Extreme Italian Sandwich

Dinner: rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes, corn


Right before bed my niece called me and my dad totaled his truck last night on his way to a fire call (he's a volunteer fireman). Apparently there was a pretty bad storm going on and a lightning strike at a bad time blinded him. I wasn't there so I dunno, but the end result is a dead truck and a slightly beat up dad. ugh...

pulled pork, a steak and rutabaga fries?!

Breakfast:
some pound cake and a milky way chocochino at work.

Lunch:
pulled pork with slaw sandwich
cup of veggie soup

Snack:
pear

Dinner:
flat iron steak
mac&cheese


So I tried to make some rutabaga fries tonight on the theory that it works with sweet potatoes so it should for rutabaga. more experimentation is needed because my oil was at first to hot and they started to blacken before they were cooked all the way through and then when they started cooking slow enough it was still turning way dark before they were finished. Think if i try it again I will either try thick kettle style chips or perhaps shoestring size french fries to get more surface area compared to middle. The good news is i liked the flavor of the cooked one or two I tries but the burned parts overwhelmed the middles ... more work on this recipe.

bay scallops!! and bacon..... so much for healthy

Bacon and Scallop Tortellini

1/2 lb bay scallops
1/4 lb bacon (cut into bite sized pieces
4oz three cheese tortellini (whatever flavor you like really)
1/2 lb snap peas (originally i was gonna use asparagus but the peas looked good)
1/2 container alfredo sauce from deli case (you know the cheating stuff, same place ya get the "fresh pasta")
1/2 tsp chopped parsley
1 small onion rough chopped
salt&pepper


Boil the pasta until it's a couple minutes from done and toss in the peas. Once the water starts to boil again drain the pasta and leave in strainer with a cover over it loosely. It will finish cooking as you do the rest of this recipe. You could have started the Bacon cooking in a pan during the pasta cooking if you wanted a head start. Once the bacon is starting to get good and brown drain off most of the fat and add the onions and cook until bacon is crispy and onions have started to soften. Toss in the scallops and season with salt and pepper (don't be shy with the pepper, and fresh cracked is best). Once the scallops are done (should just be a few minutes, they cook fast and you do NOT want to overcook them) remove the proteins to a plate with a paper towel allow to drain while you finish the pasta. Dump the pasta into teh hot pan that is still slightly greasy and saute a minute or two to get the rest of the water off. Spoon in the alfredo sauce (I said half a package but it really just needs enough to coat the pasta and peas) and saute until everything is warmed up and coated. Finish with the parsley and some more black pepper.

Serve the bacon and scallop mixture over the pasta. You could even top with parm. cheese if you wanted, I just didn't have any and it already looked unhealthy enough. Tasty though.

steak!

Well the internet connection in't much better today .. for awhile it seemed ok and then someone int eh area must have found a new porn site to copy locally because it started the same crap again. Very annoying....

Decided I wanted steak so I went to Longhorn Steakhouse in Nashua NH for lunch.
I won't say it's the best steak I have ever had but it was a pleasant surprise. Though it does kinda make me laugh that the place was styles after a Texas steakhouse and I am in NH eating at it when I own a house in TX.... :P

Breakfast: Banana

Lunch: (pics below)
Texas Tonions (onion peels, with a chipotle ranch dipping sauce)
house salad w/chipotle ranch
12 oz ribeye and steamed veggies

Dinner:
Chef Boyardee spagh&meatballs



Texas Tonions - lame name, but very tasty


12oz Ribeye (i cut a piece off before taking the picture)

feeling better but crappy internet connection

Well my back is MOSTLY better, not 100% but i can get around without pain now unless i sit int eh same position for to long then it's stiff. This is good because back pain sucks .. seriously. Now on to my next frustration. Great timing too...

Last night around 8pm my network connection (through Comcast) started totally sucking. I would get bouts of packet loss bordering on a complete connection loss and then it would work fine for a few minutes and then latency would spike back up to something like 3000 ms. This obviously completely ruins my ability to play WoW and this weekend being right before a big deadline at work I have to work this weekend. I am considered a contractor at the office I am in right now so going into the office is technically not an option over the weekend. (I am working at a business partner's site) So every time I try and do anything work related it starts off fine then fails a few minutes into file transfer's. My work has me downloading creating and uploading files that are anywhere from 5 megs in size to 40megs in size. I've seen this happen to me before when i had to do a lot of work from home and I wonder if Comcast has some traffic watchign software and penalizes their high bandwidth users in some way... hard to say but I can say this ... Comcast completely sucks at keeping their network stable, they also don't want to talk about it. I called them and was told that there wasn't a problem because they could ping and reset my cable modem without problem. I even explained to the moron on the phone that the problem took some time to happen (like 2 or 3 minutes usually) and was told that i could just reset my router and modem when i saw the problem. Yessir that works... and I'd also love to have to turn my car off on the highway and wait 30 seconds before starting every 1/2 mile.... morons. This was business account technical support too, the online chat people can't talk to you if you have a business account. So I guess I am forces to head into the office and hope my badge opens the door. Just how I wanted to spend my weekend. I'd wish ruin on Comcast over their ineptness but I need them to pull their heads out and get the network working so I can play and work from the apartment. BAH!!!!!

Food yesterday:
Breakfast: banana and chai tea Latte
Lunch: Chef Boyardee
Snack: banana
Dinner: Tater Tots

healing up...

Seems that I manage to get to this far easier in teh morning than the evening...

Food yesterday
Breakfast:
banana
Sausage egg cheese croissant

Lunch:
Patty melt & fries and a few spoons of disgusting chicken&rice soup...

Snack: pear

Dinner:
Spaghetti&meatballs
Banana

Was able to get out of bed fairly easily this morning which is good, back is healing up but it was still hard to sleep. I did go to bed way early last night and read for quite awhile. So even though I was awake for 20 minutes out of every hour to hour and a half I still got quite a bit of sleep, which probably helps the healing process.

back ... better? sort of

Ok, so getting out of bed didn't involve any screaming but it was still very difficult. I must have really done something to my back yesterday. It's better today but still.. i wouldn't want to have to go to work as a laborer today. Driving in to work was bad enough. At least it's quite a lot better than yesterday right after i did it and even in the evening when i got out of bed after sleeping to try and relax some. It seems that the pain sorta goes away if i stay in the same position for awhile (most positions) but then when it's time to move it's really stiff and painful for awhile. Walking doesn't really hurt much but carrying groceries in one hand while unlocking the door hurts. Wish I had thought to take advil before coming into the building at work today, now the thought of walking down the stairs to get the advil is worse than the pain of not having it.

Yesterday's food was completely uninteresting ... and there were no formal meals, just a snack here and there when i felt like i could eat. The back pain makes me a little sick if i move just right.

Over the day I had: Chef Boyardee Spaghetti & meatballs, Hot fries, 3 bananas, 2 black & white cookies and 3 chicken fingers leftover from the previous nights Chinese takeout.

tuesday food.. and Wednesday mornign back pain

Ok first off , I went to bed last night without writing a post, so here is what I had to eat yesterday

Breakfast:
sausage egg and cheese croissant

Lunch:
turkey meatloaf with mashed potatoes and broccoli

Snack:
Pear and york peppermint patty

Dinner:
Chinese takeout, pork fried rice, chicken fingers, egg roll, crab rangoon

Now the unpleasant bit. I got up late this morning, which is ok I had planned to work from the apartment anyhow. Went to the living room to plug in my laptop and when i did, something in my back tightened up and caused me to practically scream in pain and sit down , which wasn't any relief at all. SO far I haven't found a reliably comfortable position, though a hot shower and some advil have managed to dull it enough that I can sit here and work.

ouch ouch ouch ouch..... stupid back .. getting old (and being fat) really sucks .. can't even open the cover on a laptop. pathetic...

oh well time to actually get some work done .. slowly.

helps to publish post before turning off laptop....

This was originally written on Monday (6/2/08) but I closed my laptop forgetting I hadn't clicked publish yet. So umm oops...

Long day at work, a lot of little things to do and frustrations every step of the way. not going to go into any details here as this is a public forum but I will just say that some people need to really spend time learning their areas of expertise before claiming to be experts.

Played WoW for a couple of hours tonight and managed to get to exalted reputation with Ogrimmar (did i spell that right? I never seem to) which means, I can now buy a different color swift mount wolf. Love the white frostwolf but somehow it just doesn't seem like a rogue's mount.


Breakfast: Nothing

Snack: rice crispy treat

Lunch:
chicken and artichoke Fricassee
veggie rice soup

Snack: apple and milky way (this is what i get for skipping breakfast ....)

Dinner:
steamed hot dogs & tortilla chips

Skipping breakfast is bad, not only did I feel like crap all day but all I wanted to do was snack snack snack. Mostly managed to avoid it but I still managed to eat more than I would have liked to.

It's only june?!??!

I am still in the Boston area working and it's getting old. I love the area but Michelle and my dogs not being here is completely ruining it. I do enjoy seeing my family and I love the climate, but it's all somehow lame without someone to share it with. Looking forward to my next trip home which appears to be July at this point. Ugh! ... did I mention that I am sick of being this far from the home we have built outside Austin? If you hadn't guessed, I am homesick.

Went with my mom and dad to Vermont to see some family and my grandparents graves. My aunt Barbara wasn't doing well and I hope she feels much better soon so we can go back and spend more than 20 minutes with her. My aunt Linda seemed to be holding up ok but her husband seemed to be feeling under the weather some. I guess this is what happens when you get old. I haven't mentioned but my dad is the "baby" of the family and he turned 70 this year. We will go spend some more time with them before i leave for Austin this fall.

Bought an Out of State NH fishing license this weekend. $53.. ouch ... but 7 days was 33 or 35 and i figure i might want to go later in the summer too. So now I have to go fishing at least a few more times to make it even remotely worth it :) I did stop at a small lake on the way back to MA but it was really windy and I didn't manage to catch anything worth even taking a picture of, but the wind did keep the insects to a minimum. Not a loss really, was really nice out.

Normally I would write up menus for what I have been eating but it's been a couple days and I'm slipping. So the highlights...

Junk food .. junk food ... (Subway and Quiznos, better than McDonalds and Burger King, but still not healthy .. especially the way I have subs made). Some steamed hot dogs and chips ... still not doing the healthy thing apparently. Poached eggs and toast today for breakfast today. The actual highlight was a Lobster Roll(thanks Corinne!!!! I couldn't get these outa my head all damn weekend!) at D'Angelos on the way back to MA. Was actually VERY good .. but $15 for a sandwich is usually more than I can justify.

late to work - yesterday

I didn't get to the office until almost 11 today (yesterday at this point .. oops, forgot to save this last night), so I didn't actually eat a formal lunch. Oh well. Such is life. Not a terrible lot going on of interest either. I ended up not playing WoW much, wrote this post (and didn't post it) and then finished my book and went to sleep... boring....

Breakfast:
Coffee + sausage, egg and cheese croissant

Lunch:
Pear

Dinner:
2 taco supremes
slice of rhubarb pie
another slice of rhubarb pie

broken harddrives and free food

An exec in town from IBM had a broken laptop, dead HD, so that ate a lot of the day today. Good news, she left with a working laptop, at least it was working... needs replaced drive.

Breakfast:
Coffee and Banana

Lunch:
Free sandwiches from conference room

Snack:
Cookies

Dinner:
2 hot dogs (again)

Not a special day gastronomically(did i manage to spell that right?!). But not terrible either ... now need sleep.

sun and hot dog buns!

Way to much food over the weekend, feeling laggy and sleepy still and I haven't eaten hardly anything substantial today. Probably also got a bit to much sun, it's not as hot as direct sun in Texas but you can get sun stroke deceptively easily when there is a warm day with a little wind but no clouds. I did spend 5 or 6 hours on Sunday and Monday more or less in direct sunlight. I should probably wear a hat some too.

Food for Tuesday...
Breakfast:
Coffee and Banana

Lunch:
Half a turkey club wrap and a small cup of veggie soup

Snack:
Pear

Dinner:
2 hot dogs, steamed and in buns (more about hot dog buns below)
few tortilla chips and guac


Hot dog buns ... this seems like such a simple thing that should more or less not mean much in the overall hot dog experience, so long as they are made of decent bread and not stale. In New England you can get buns that are cut differently than we can get in Texas and they toast/grill nicely making the hot dog eating experience exceptional, IMOHO. Here is a picture of a properly created hot dog bun with just the right amount of crust and plain bread surface area for toasting.
I may just not have looked hard enough for these "top sliced" buns in TX but so far I have not reliably found them.



Ok so maybe I am just being ultra picky ... but I like what I like!

long weekend .. food and stuff

Memorial day weekend... i didn't plug my computer in much this weekend so I didn't keep a log of what we had to eat .. needless to say if you knew my family you would know that I ate to much and most of it wasn't good for me. :) but it was tasty!

I can't remember what I had for what meals but here is a list of the food thatt was available at various times over 3 days of random bbq's

Potato salad, egg salad, tuna salad, macaroni salad.
chips of all kinds, guac, and pickles.
hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken. I think there was even some hot sausages.
2 kinds of homemade baked beans.

All in all it was a good weekend. I had planned on going fishing, but when i went for a short walk to do some target practicing in the woods behind my house I ended up with ticks on me and i HATE ticks. So that was it for the woods for a bit. I still feel like i have them crawling all over me. yuck ..



Some doggies at the BBQs, Rain (Left), Star(Bottom), Honey(Right Top), Meka(Right Bottom)

oops forgot to post this before going to bed

was a long slow day. worked till just past noon and then went home to track down a package that UPS was supposed to deliver. I had not requested a signature needed but apparently the shipper did. Good news is that the apartment management signed for it. Just took UPS 4.5 hours to get from my front door to about 200 yards away because apparently they set aside all the undeliverables for the property management company and drop them by the main office all at once. This is a great way to handle it but if you are tracking a package online it gets confusing. Then I finished off some work stuff and played a little bit of WoW, got level 63 and managed figure out where to get one of my rogues skills caught up with her level. Watched some tv and time for bed, not the most interesting Friday night nor the most productive but ehh ... still breathing at the end of it so it's a good day I guess.

Breakfast:
Coffee and PB&J sandwich

Lunch:
Left over boiled dinner

Dinner:
Left over boiled dinner

Snack:
Chocolate ice cream

Boiled dinner!!

I worked from hoem today so at lunch I stopped by the store and got a corned beef and some potatoes. I had cabbage and carrots. Oh and I bought a yellow turnip (rutabaga). The house smells great and I absolutely love corned beef.

Corned beef boiled dinner.

Breakfast:
coffee
peanut butter and jelly toast

Lunch:
2 slices pepperoni pizza
coffee ice cream

Dinner:
Corned beef, cabbage turnip, potaoes and carrots

Idol is over and more green chili stew

Well, I hate to admit this but I watched a fair amount of American Idol this year and I am happy with the results. Congratulations David Cook. It's nice to see someone win who I like to hear sing, though I would not have been unhappy had it gone the other way. A very good final round of singers. Also a great show over all.

Breakfast:
Coffee and Chocolate stick

Lunch:
Pulled chicken sandwich (disgusting)
Italian Wedding soup

Snack:
Pear
cranberry apple juice

Dinner:
Green Chili stew - even better yet again.
Pringles

Green Chili Stew revisited

Rough day fighting with hardware at work and scheduling new Linux kernel patches that we need to get in soon. Can't really say much more about that but it's starting to get close to crunch time again. Didn't feel much like cooking tonight, but luckily I already had some green chili stew in the fridge that has been there since last night.

Breakfast:
Banana
Coffee

Lunch:
1/2 italian sandwich
1/2 chicken salad
cranberry apple juice

Snack:
pear

Dinner:
green chili stew - sooooooo much better reheated

Pan fried salmon

Not much of note today... so here is what I had to eat. Dinner was pretty good but not spectacular. I'll make it again though it's tasty. Blackened is better though, but to blacken you need cast iron not thin crappy stainless or a nonstick, you probably also want better air evacuation than I have. No need to invite the fire dept.

Breakfast:
Coffee and chocolate stick

Lunch:
Chicken Noodle Soup
Mushroom Ravioli and Broccoli

Snack:
Pear

Dinner:
Pan fried salmon
Steamed veggies
Sauté onions

Snack:
(yeah i know ... but i was HUNGRY)
Pringles

New Mexican food craving satisfied! and some junk food :(

Ok so today was frustrating. I wanted to go for a hike, but i got up to late and by the time i got out of the house and lunch eaten it started to rain right as I got to the place I was going to wander around the woods in. So i went to the store and while wondering around aimlessly looking for something interesting to cook I saw some pork stew meat on sale. Bought some cans of green chili and a few other ingredients and made a green chili stew without a recipe.


Breakfast:
Does toothpaste and mouthwash count?

Lunch:
Cheeseburger and fried at burger king
Vanilla ice cream cone (Kimball farms not BK)

Snack:
Funny bone (peanut butter filled chocolate covered Hostess snack)

Dinner:
Green chili stew (recipe below)




Green Chili Stew
1.5 lb pork cut into bite sized pieces
1 lb baby red potatoes cut into 1/8ths
3 onions chopped
1.5 tbsp minced garlic
32oz chicken broth or stock
12oz canned green chilis
1 can red beans
salt
pepper
chili powder
oregano

Saute the pork and onions with just a little bit of canola oil to help keep it from sticking. The pork will render plenty of oil but to start with it will be sticky and dry. once the pork looks half cooked and the onions are starting to get transparent add the rest of the ingredients starting with the chicken broth. I like to add the chilis last, saving 1/3 of them until the simmering is half done, but that isn't strictly necessary, just looks nice with slightly green bits left. Cook time is up to you ... basically all you NEED to do is soften the potatoes to the point where you can eat them, but i think it tastes really good with about 2 hours of simmering.

This is NOT overly spicy but that will depend on the green chilis you use. I used (because all i could get) Ortega fire roasted greenchilis in 4oz cans. It tastes good, there is a tiny little bit of heat but it is hardly noticeable. If you want it more spicy move up to a hotter pepper. I plan to do this again this fall when I am back home in austin, with hatch which will likely bring the heat up some but not terribly. I like the result of the mild chili flavor but to each their own... fire it up with a little ground chipotle would be good for a smokey heat.