Grilled Corn

All this talk about grilling and steaks is starting to make me hungry. I think I’ll stop by the grocery on the way home tonight and pick up a couple of nice thick T-bones. I want some fresh corn on the cob, too.Corn is in season and very inexpensive right now. I might get an extra ear for myself because I really do like grilled corn on the cob.

We will be cooking out and dining well tonight, folks!

A-1 Marinades

While I’m thinking about grilling steaks, I have to let everyone know about this new line of A-1 sauce marinades. I found these in the barbecue sauce area of the grocery store. The name A-1 is what caught my eye, after all, when you say steak sauce, A-1 is the first name that comes to mind.

Well, the good folk at A-1 have brought out two distinct flavors of marinade for beef. There is the Chicago style and the New York style. I bought the Chicago style, and let me tell you, I’m not cooking steaks with anything else ever again!

Chili Dogs

Have a craving for a hot dog. Even better, a chili dog would be great.

The best place to get a chili dog around here is at the Sonic drive in. I like the way you pull into a parking stall and place the order over a speaker, then a server brings the order out to your car.

The Sonic has really good onion rings, and their drink happy hour is a good bargain. Usually I order a cherry limeade or a Route 44 cherry coke.

Milk Shakes

I’ve always enjoyed a good milk shake. I’ve heard that Wendy’s is now serving milk shakes, so today I decided to give one a try. I was disappointed, it tasted just like the ones that you get from McDonald’s. I should have just kept on driving another mile and a half and gone to Dairy Queen. They at least use real ice cream.

Rubbing elbows

This past weekend I felt like I was completely out of my element. I was invited to a party by my brother-in-law. The party was being held by some friends of his, and he thought that it would be a good opportunity for me to network and expand my business contacts. The music was good, the food was good, and the drinks weren’t bad either. But I have to admit that I found it a little bit difficult to engage in conversation with most of the people there. Seems as if everyone there was a major computer geek.

I’m not all up to date with all of the aspects and terminology of computer and the Internet. Sure, I have a computer, and I blog, but when it comes to carrying on a conversation with a group of folks about topics such as a web hosting hub review I have to admit that I’m rather lost. I’m assuming that they were talking about a website that reviews and rates web hosting services, but I was afraid to open my mouth and stick my foot in it! A wise man once said “‘Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!”

Eggs

When I was a kid, I really didn’t like hard boiled eggs.  At all.  I did not even like fried eggs where the yolk was hard.  (Still don’t!)  Yet I love devilled eggs!  And egg salad sandwiches!  Seems to me that if I liked devilled eggs and egg salad sandwiches, that I’d like hard boiled eggs as well!  I was thinking about that this morning as my wife was boiling some eggs (to make devilled eggs) and I was trying to figure out why that was so.

After all, the major difference is that a little bit of mayo or salad dressing is mixed in.  Maybe a touch of mustard.  Then it came to me – I don’t like plain hard boiled eggs because they are so dry!  I need that little bit of extra moisture!  Whew – another one of the nagging mysteries solved!

Wet Halloween

We weren’t expecting many trick-or-treaters last night, but we didn’t get any at all. It rained almost all day and into the night, so I would imagine most parents took their kids out to the shopping malls to let them do their trick-or-treating under the safety of lights and under the dry roof.

I think that letting the kids trick-or-treat at the malls is a good idea. You don’t have to worry quite so much about the safety of the children running around in the dark streets, and the likelihood of getting some candy that was tampered with is slimmer.

I can remember in years past that local hospitals used to offer free x-ray screening of Halloween candy to make sure that there were no metal foreing objects in the candy! How sad is that? I haven’t heard of that being done in more recent years, though. Maybe they decided that bombarding candy with X-rays isn’t such a good idea!

Tea flavors

 I was reading an article about the health benefits of white tea recently.  I’ve never tried it before.  I’ve tried green tea and didn’t like it, but I think that the next time I’m in a restaurant that offers white tea I’ll give it a try!

Happy ghoul day!

I wonder how many people I’m going to be seeing around town dressed up in costumes today!  I saw quite a few of them yesterday!  I guess they decided to dress up for work and don’t work on weekends!  I’m always amused on Halloween to see how many people actually DO put on costumes and go to work!

We’ve bought a couple of bags of Snickers fun size bars to pass out in case we get any trick or treaters tonight.  I know that we probably should have bought something that is peanut – free, but that is our own personal favorites, and we usually don’t get ANY trick or treaters, so why should be buy something we don’t like ourselves?  We’ll probably be the ones eating it!  Whatever you do, I hope you have fun and stay safe!

Fruit flies

I understand that fruit flies come into the house via the fresh fruit that we buy at the grocery store, but I don’t understand how they travel from the kitchen area all the way into the bathroom.  It just doesn’t make sense to me that we didn’t have any kind of drain flies in the bathroom until we brought fruit in the house and started seeing fruit flies around the compost bucket!  My wife tells me that they are just fruit flies, and there really isn’t a whole lot we can about them if we want to keep bringing fruit into the house.  That’s really too bad, I enjoy the fresh fruit, but I hate the fruit flies!

Scallops for supper

My wife came home with a pound of fresh sea scallops that she picked up at the store on her way home from work. She said they were a good price, and since we hadn’t had scallops for a long time (probably a year or more!) she decided to cook them for supper tonight. She also picked up some fresh snap beans. So she cooked a great baked scallop dish with a cream base and stuffing on top, and served them with the fresh beans and sliced tomatoes picked from our garden. We had freshly baked sourdough bread along with the meal. What a feast that was!

Nectarine won’t ripen

I never realized that nectarine’s bought from the grocery store won’t ripen. I bought a nectarine about six weeks ago, expecting it to soften up so it would be nice and juicy. I’ve been checking it every couple of days and that thing is just as firm as the day I bought it! I had bought two at the time and ate one immediately, but it was not ripe so I decided to leave the other one to ripen. I don’t know, maybe it’s going to petrify! Very disappointing!

Thought she was going to cry!

My wife’s birthday was today, and our son baked her a cake to celebrate the occasion. This was the first time in years that anyone has even thought about giving her a cake for her birthday. We’ve always just given her cards and gifts, but no cake. Well, this year our son decided to bake her a birthday cake. When he presented the cake to her after dinner, I thought she was going to cry! I couldn’t believe how touched she was by such a simple gesture! I guess we’ll have to remember that and bake her cakes in the future now!

Electric potato peeler

My wife has been telling me that she wants to buy an electric potato peeler. I thought she was joking! I never imagined that there was such a thing! Oh sure, there is the old fashioned apple peeler that peels, cores, and slices apples, and I can imagine it could be used for potatoes, but those are hand cranked things that have been around for decades. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the other day a catalog came in the mail and I saw an electric potato peeler in it! I think I might buy it for my wife to use. I love boiled and mashed potatoes and we don’t have them very often because peeling potatoes makes her carpal tunnel syndrome act up. Maybe, just maybe now I’ll get more variety of potatoes for dinner!

My wife is thinking about a new career

My wife tells me that she is thinking about starting a new career.  She wants to try to become a personal chef.  She loves to cook, and she’s good at it.  And we live in an area where we think there just might be a market for it!  So I’ve told her that I think it’s a great idea and that I’d be as supportive as I possible can be.  So she’s happy as can be right now, planning the menus and her marketing strategy.  My wife loves to plan things, so she is in her glory right now!

Hush puppies

Last night we went to eat dinner at the Golden Corral Restaurant.  It was an adventure getting there because the road we usually take to get there was closed due to a traffic accident and we had to seek a detour in unfamiliar territory.  We eventually got there, though, so all was well.  I was glad to see that they were serving hush puppies; for some reason there are not very many restaurants around here that sell them and I like them a lot.  I don’t know why my wife doesn’t cook them!  I would think that they would be simple enough to cook.  Hmmmm….. maybe it’s because if she cooked them we wouldn’t eat out as often!  Now I see her plan!

Queen Ann Lace jelly

I stopped at a local farmer’s market yesterday afternoon on my way home from work.  That’s the first time I’ve been to that particular farmer’s market.  Boy, those veggies looked so inviting!  I bought a half dozen ears of freshly picked silver queen corn to eat for supper.  I sure do love freshly picked corn; there is nothing like it in the world!  One of the farmers there was selling pastries and home made jelly and granola.  He was offering taste tests of his Queen Ann Lace jelly.  Well, I know what Queen Ann Lace flowers are, but never heard of making jelly with them!  So I gladly accepted the offer of a taste.  Overall it wasn’t an unpleasant jelly, but it was on the tart side.  The label says that there is lemon flavor added, so that would explain the tartness!  But after I swallowed the jelly my eyes started to water!  Well, I don’t want to be buying jelly that I might have an allergy to, so I said no thanks, but did buy a piece of his peach cobbler.

Guilty pleasure

I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of going to a fast food restaurant around lunch time and just getting a strawberry milkshake instead of a “real lunch.” It has been so hot lately that I don’t really want a hot lunch, and I am usually in a rush when it happens so I don’t want to bother to actually EAT anything. So a strawberry shake is cool, filling, and delicious. I have to be careful though because I know that I’ll pack on the weight if I keep doing that! I wish that these places would sell “good for you” smoothies as a healthy alternative to milkshakes!

Papaya

I had never had a papaya to eat until this morning.  My wife bought a couple at the grocery store, thinking that it would be fun to share them with me.  She had eaten one in a restaurant a while ago and thought it was wonderful.  So this morning she took one and washed it off, sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds (I wonder if the seeds are poisonous, and if not, what they taste like?) and squirted some fresh lemon juice on them. 

It was quite tasty!  I was surprised; I was reluctant to try it.  I’m glad she bought two of them, we’ll be eating the second one tomorrow morning for breakfast!  I’ve heard that they are good for your health to eat.

Attention NFL sports fans

Did you know that you can get a great deal on the nfl sunday ticket program that Direct TV offers?  The nfl sunday ticket price gives you the opportunity to watch over 200 nfl games over the nfl season!  That is a LOT of football!  According to their nfl sunday ticket schedule, you can watch up to sixteen games every week!

And you can keep tabs on the scores of all of the games without missing a single play of the favorite game you are watching!  Isn’t technology great!

Ladies, this is a great way to make sure your hubby is entertained while you go off and play with your Red Hat lady friends, getting dressed up and going out to tea while your hubbies are safely glued to the sofa watching their favorite games!  All you have to do is make sure there is plenty of food and drink for him to grab when he wants it, and he won’t miss you for a moment!  Heck, he won’t even realize you are gone!