As I’ve mentioned before, the wife doesn’t like hard-boiled eggs. Since the standard Southern recipe for chicken salad is swimming in chopped eggs and mustard, I’ve had to develop another recipe. This one comes out so creamy and mild that we usually eat it on crackers like a dip instead of spread over white bread.
I bought a pottery kiln six months ago for the wife and she’s been firing it about every month or so. We’re having some problems with warping in the glaze-firing process, so we’ve been experimenting with plate molds of varying wood breeds and thicknesses. It’s been frustrating, but I guess you have to start somewhere. She’s been blogging a bunch of arts and crafts projects lately: Elizabeth Chandler Designs • Project Blog
Inflation has pushed the price of meat pretty high this summer, and rising gas and grain prices will likely push them higher before they finally plateau. If you’re looking to buy different, cheaper cuts, I highly recommend asking your butcher to separate some beef shoulder tenders for you. They taste like NY strip, cut like fillet mignon, and cost a quarter of the price.
I blogged the USA Cycling Championships the past two years because they were held in my hometown of Greenville, SC. In 2009, we cheered as George Hincapie, the hometown favorite, won by a wheel. In 2010, we watched the final downtown circuits from a sunny knoll in Cleveland Park. This year, we decided to take advantage of the fact that the race course is literally at the end of our street, and that our nearby house has very comfortable A/C for the 45 minutes between mountain stages. I took some pictures, but there’s nothing new to reveal, so I decided to film the peloton.
This is what it looks like when nearly 100 riders, their team cars, race staff, and emergency responders whiz by at 40+ miles per hour.
Exactly what it sounds like – flowers that have been cleaned, stuffed, breaded, and fried.
I’ve been trying to get the wife to eat more meat on the bone. I’m convinced that bone-in fare is simple more flavorful than its boneless counterparts. She’s okay with barbecued ribs, because the bone is so big, but she gets squeamish when the bones are small. I’ve been making lots of bone-in pork chops lately and she’s gotten more accustomed to eating that way. I figured it was finally time to go for the gold and cook a whole chicken. It resulted in the best roasted/grilled chicken I’ve ever eaten.
The wife and I traveled to Albany, GA last weekend for a friend’s wedding. We got to town early enough to walk through the park and trails on the riverfront and even attended a Lumberjack Show downtown. Downtown Albany seems to have a pretty good revitalization plan in effect, but they’re a long way from seeing it realized.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love driving. Most people think of driving or riding in a car as a means to an end. I think of it as an end in itself. I’m so enthralled by all the Americana out there that I always take the long way home (of course, “always” means “whenever the wife lets me”).
It’s been a month since I planted the garden seeds and I’d say my experiment has been a success. About 2/3 of the plants are growing from the holes I dug and the remaining 1/3 are from the seeds I simply stomped into the dirt. That’s in line with the way I planted them. We’ll have to wait to see how much fruit the plants produce, but these early results suggest that I’ve been wasting time and money buying more mature plants at farmers’ markets and at the big box stores.
The wife’s been trying to talk me into getting a few chickens for a couple of years. We already have a garden in the backyard and she insists that other homes in our neighborhood have much more developed backyard gardens complete with rainwater catchment systems, bee hives and chicken coops. As part of her sales pitch, she bought tickets to the first annual Greenville Urban Farm Tour.
