11.11.09
Posted in animals, food, frustrations, justice, theology at 2:37 pm by david
These are people with very good hearts doing very good things, but getting hit by the law of unintended consequences and a general lack of awareness among our culture regarding animal welfare, the environment, and treating food with respect.
- A puppy was a “prize” at a silent auction for a local ministry. So many reasons this was a terrible idea:
- A “responsible” breeder should have families committed for a litter before breeding the dog.
- Highest bid is a terrible way to determine if a family is a good match for a dog. (
Fortunately, in this case, the dog did end up with a good family. Update: The family is still a good family, but the dog does not get along with their other dog. The auction dog is now up for sale. See #4.)
- The “adopting” family has no verification of the health of the dog or the conditions in which it was raised.
- The “adopting” family does not have adequate time to discuss if they should get a(nother) dog or if this is the right dog for them.
- One of the games at a festival held for some of the poorest in our town was to have kids guess if an egg was raw or hard-boiled and then swing a bat at it to determine if they were right. Again, so many things wrong with this:
- It is a waste of precious food, and animal-produced food at that.
- The activity was purely destructive.
- It was to be ministering to these poor, many of whom would probably love a dozen eggs. Instead, food was destroyed in front of them.
- The kids were possibly (likely?) getting raw egg on themselves and then eating burgers, candy, etc.—ripe conditions for salmonella or some other such nastiness.
- A team raising money for the local Relay for Life was hosting a “Balloons to Heaven” fundraiser. Are there people who really don’t know about the environmental problems releasing balloons into the air can cause?
I’ve recently been having some discussions about trying to get some of these issues (and others, such as extreme poverty, clean water, etc.) in front of our church and getting the Church more active. Moreover, I would like to see this information inform all other aspects of our Christian lives. I’m not suggesting it is more (or less) important than other fruits of the Spirit, but it is something we are ALL called to. Some are called to be preachers, some teachers, some administrators, but all were given the Micah Mandate:
6 With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
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06.15.09
Posted in family, food at 9:55 pm by david
Some dear friends of ours are at Children’s Hospital right now with their 5-month old daughter. I’m going to swing by Chick-Fil-A (one of my absolute favorite places) tomorrow morning to pick up some breakfast for them. Knowing this, I asked Jennifer, “Would it be wrong to have a peach milkshake for breakfast?” Jennifer replied, “Why would that be wrong?”
Yes!
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05.25.09
Posted in animals, celtic, food, miscellaneous at 5:14 pm by david
A couple of weeks ago, on the way home, I started thinking about things I would like to do before I die. Yesterday, during the sermon, our pastor referenced The Bucket List, so I figured it at least gives me a segue to post this.
- Eat fish and chips in a pub in Ireland while listening to some Irish trad, preferably including uilleann pipes.
- While in Ireland, hear Robin Mark lead worship.
- Eat a 3×3, fries, and shake at In-N-Out.
- Set up a dog hotel. Not like the movie. Just have a good stretch of land where we can have a place to comfortably take care of a number of dogs. Probably after I quit working full-time and we are empty-nesters.
- Travel the BBQ Trail in Texas (and eat at each place and any other I pass on the way).
- While in Texas, drink a Dublin Dr. Pepper.
- Become a KCBS Certified Judge
- Hit the IRS limit on deductible charitable contributions
And I want to do all of those things with my family. If they aren’t there, it just won’t be as fun. (They don’t necessarily have to participate in everything, like eating at every single BBQ joint, but they are going to come along for the ride, and they are going to enjoy it!)
Yes, there are several food items. Apparently my bucket originally held 11 herbs and spices.
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04.25.09
Posted in family, food at 8:38 pm by david
I took advantage of one of my days off to stick a 10½ pound brisket on the smoker for about 10 hours. Normally this would be plenty to feed us for several days and have about the same amount to freeze for later. Well, that was before Anna. Turns out Daddy’s little girl likes brisket as much as he does. At dinner tonight, should put away about half as much as either of us did. I don’t think that brisket is going to last us quite as long anymore; I might need to start smoking 2 brisket. I had better also put Lonnie’s Meat Market on speed dial.
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11.23.08
Posted in food, frustrations, tech at 1:10 pm by david
I had read that Dr. Pepper was giving out coupons for a free 20-oz. bottle today. Oddly, they are doing it because some heavy metal album ended up finally getting released this year. But when I got to the Dr. Pepper website, I was greeted with this:
Warning: main(header.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in c:\inetpub\websites\VML\drpepper\prd\index_temp.php on line 20
Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘header.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.;C:\php5\pear’) in c:\inetpub\websites\VML\drpepper\prd\index_temp.php on line 20
We are experiencing high traffic and are updating our servers. Please try again later or contact our consumer relations at 1-800-696-5891.
They are upgrading their servers? There’s this thing in IT called “capacity planning.” There is also this thing in web application security called “don’t spit out your error messages to the browser.”
So, Dr. Pepper, the next time you plan to offer coupons for free bottles through your website, expect a deluge of hits. Some of us really like Dr. Pepper.
Also, Dr. Pepper, in your php.ini file, change this:
display_errors = On
to this:
display_errors = Off
For my consulting services, I will accept payment in a lifetime supply of your delicious nectar.
Update: I got to the address submission form, but they didn’t set up their server to actually execute the PHP code, so the PHP code came through as plain text. Another piece of advice, Dr. Pepper, learn to use htmlentities()—all of your fields are vulnerable to XSS.
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09.11.08
Posted in food at 6:08 pm by david
That would be a can full of deluscious dulce de leche (”deluscious” being a merging of delicious and luscious). Our small group is having an ice cream social tonight so I made this to take as a topper. We’re taking coconut, too; I’m just sorry I don’t have any grilled pineapple.
I have been wanting to try this for a while. All you do is take a can of sweetened condensed milk and submerge it in boiling water. The longer you go, the thicker and darker it gets. This is after 90 minutes. Be sure that the water is over the top of the can at all times. I could not believe how amazing it tastes — like the creamiest caramel you’ve ever had.
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06.15.08
Posted in family, food, frustrations at 10:49 pm by david
It wasn’t quite what I imagined. I guess you could say my Father’s Day began at the stroke of midnight, since I was up. I was also up at the stroke of 1, 2, and 3. Yes, for Father’s Day my dear daughter got me the worst night’s sleep in months. She has been so good at sleeping lately — until last night. Jennifer took over for a few hours in the early morning so I got maybe 1 hour of sleep (in 15 to 30 minute spurts) up until 3:45 and then about 3 hours from then until 6:45. That pretty much killed the day for me. I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep in the afternoon while Jennifer prepared a very delicious meal for me and my parents, but it wasn’t enough and I still felt awful.
The meal that Jennifer prepared was quite excellent though:
- Sauteed tilapia with lemon-tarragon sauce
- Roasted green beans with red onion and walnuts
- Baked potatoes
- Salad
- Biscuits
- Carrot cake with cream cheese icing
[Update: I should add, in Anna’s defense, that she had gotten her first set of shots on Friday, so there is an excellent chance she was feeling a bit wonky.]
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05.11.08
Posted in family, food at 9:49 pm by david
This was a great weekend for us as we celebrated Jennifer’s first Mother’s Day; today was also the day our church does baby dedication (more on the that later, along with picts).
I wanted to make the day special for Jennifer, so, among other things, I planned my most ambitious grill to date for Jennifer, my folks, and her folks. The menu was:
- Salmon with lemon-garlic marinade
- B&B chicken (with a spice rub of paprika, black pepper, chipotle, and allspice)
- Flat iron steak
- Corn on the cob
- Seasoned mixed vegetables (zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, red onion)
- Asparagus with lemon-garlic oil
- Crimini mushrooms
- “Best American dinner rolls“
Everything except the rolls was prepared on the grill. The rolls do a cold-rise in the fridge overnight, so that actually was the easiest part because the majority of the work was done the day before. I still had a lot of planning to do to make sure things got done in such a way that it was all warm when we sat down to eat. Adding to the challenge was that I had never done corn on the grill before and I had never cooked asparagus or mushrooms at all. After pulling out several cookbooks from my grilling shelf (yes, I have an entire shelf for grilling/barbeque cookbooks), I had the cook times for each item and, after several tweaks, I had my timetable:
- 12:00 - prep chicken
- 12:30 - chicken in brine
- 1:00 - prep corn
- 1:30 - pickup cake*
- 2:30 - start briquettes
- 2:45 - season chicken and prep mixed veggies
- 3:00 - season steak and salmon in marinade
- 3:15 - chicken on the grill
- 3:30 - mixed veggies on the grill
- 3:40 - prep mushrooms and asparagus
- 4:00 - chicken and mixed veggies off the grill, add lump charcoal
- 4:05 - rolls in the oven
- 4:15 - corn and steak on the grill
- 4:20 - mushrooms and salmon on the grill; rolls out of the oven
- 4:25 - asparagus on the grill, steak off the grill
- 4:30 - everything off the grill
I ended up moving part of mushroom and asparagus prep up in the schedule and fell a few minutes behind at times, but I actually finished up right on schedule. It took me another 20 min or so to plate everything for dinner, but it was definitely good practice for when I open my restaurant.
* I couldn’t work making a cake into my schedule, so I ordered one from Shake’s Frozen Custard. It was quite tasty.
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03.22.08
Posted in food at 9:34 am by david
The bread pudding was very good, but not what I had in mind. I needed more spice in it, so I made the cinnamon syrup last night. Oh yeah. That’s tasty. The bread pudding is surprisingly light, making it very easy to eat too much. Next time I’ll play with adding more spices to the pudding itself, though this cinnamon sauce certainly has potential in a variety of applications.
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03.20.08
Posted in food at 9:52 pm by david
Just doing what I can to not think about the fact that Anna still seems perfectly content where she is and the day that we have waited so long for can be any day but we don’t know what day and I’m about to go mad with anticipation and I’m so tense with excitement that my stomach is tied in knots.
Like I said, I’m trying not to think about it.
So I baked.
Shut up.
The recipe came from Cook’s Illustrated New Best Cookbook. If you own only one cookbook, own this one. I did tweak it slightly by adding cinnamon to the custard (the recipe called for just nutmeg in the custard, and cinnamon-sugar on top). I was going to make a cinnamon syrup for it as well, but decided to try some first and then judge if I should add anything to it. It still has to cool for another 30 minutes, so I don’t know what the result of that tasting will be yet.
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