Bringing the Drama

this week, Rouses, the locally owned grocery chain, had redfish fillets advertised in their weekly ad. i love redfish. after work one day, i stopped by a store and bought a single fillet. i had grand dreams to prepare it, but ended up doing a hack job. my friend Andy had shown me a way to use the grill to make grilled/steamed catfish, and upon not finding any recipes for redfish where i already had the ingredients, i went with a variation on the grilling/steaming method. basically it’s making a foil compartment with the fish, the spices, the liquid seasoning(s), and throwing it on the grill. it comes out fantastic if you use the right amount of seasoning. unfortunately for me, i used way too much cayenne pepper. i used cayenne pepper, garlic powder, a splash of Dale’s, a splash of Worcestershire, and some butter. oh, and some of the local chain’s Vidalia onion and tomato dressing. i put it out on the grill, cooked up some steamed broccoli and some brown sugar oatmeal, then went and pulled the fish off. the broccoli came out fantastic, i’ve become good with the steaming. the oatmeal was okay. the fish was ridiculously hot. i scraped as much of the pepper off as i could, but it was not enough. i ate about half of it before throwing the rest out. next time i’ll cut back, if not completely cut out, the cayenne pepper. otherwise, the other seasonings were good, so they’ll be used again.

i had bought some peaches at walmart the other day. i know i know, i should go to the farmers’ market, but i’ve been busy on Saturdays and haven’t been able to go. who knows if the two little old ladies are still selling peaches? anyway, so i got these California peaches at walmart, and was letting them ripen on my counter. i went to eat one tonight, and two out of the four had already gone bad. they were not ripe enough yesterday, but today were so ripe they were bad. i don’t know how that happens. if that weren’t bad enough, one of the remaining peaches that i cut up had absolutely no flavor and was dry. you know how you can turn the color down on a tv until it’s all the way gone? that’s how eating this peach was, there was no flavor, no hint, no anything. i thought the white flesh peaches were bad because they didn’t have the flavor of traditional peaches, but tonight was just awful. it was very sad.

last night i had a dream involving another celebrity…actually two celebrities. i dreamt i was in the Atlanta metro area (i think) and going to visit an old run down museum to Izzy, the mascot for the Atlanta Olympics. i’m pulling up to the museum at the top of this hill and i see a few other cars and trucks, and guys in black tracksuits. i park the car and realize the guys in black tracksuits are part of Alton Brown’s Feasting On Asphalt crew. AB is actually there as well, and talking to a group who looked like they were about to go tour the museum. i get out of the car and one of the tracksuit guys and i start talking, and he remembered me from the previous day from a cooking demonstration or something. i remember thinking AB would remember me from our somewhat awkward encounter at the bookstore in NOLA. as we walked over to join the tour group, i woke up. the reasoning for having this dream may be found below….

yesterday i had PT and then lifted weights at the gym (they are in the same location, so i really have no excuse) and got home about 7:30 (JUST in time for How I Met Your Mother!). i had plans to use the chicken i had bought that had an expiration date of 9/20, and had hopes of trying out the Macaroni Grill dinner stuff i had bought the last time i went to the store. i figured it was like one of those supper bake things, where you just lay everything out and put it in the oven. oh no, this process involved oil, a skillet, coating chicken in flour, and large BBQ tongs. i had never fried or used hot oil before, so it was going to be a night of firsts in the cooking department.

the box says prep time was 20 minutes, but whatever, when i saw everything i’d need and what i had to do, i knew it wasn’t going to only take 20 minutes. i was tired, i was getting a late start cooking, but i decided to do it anyway.

i cut and breaded the chicken according to the instructions and oiled the pan to cook them.

the box called for 1 lb, but i had bought 1.5 lbs, and stupid me didn’t use the big skillet, so i had to go to the skillet twice to make to cook all the chicken. since i don’t have regular sized tongs, i had to use my giant BBQ tongs which were ridiculously oversized for this endeavor. (sorry, no pictures of those)

i added the cooking wine and the seasoning to the chicken after they were browned on each side and let it simmer. then i got out my big pyrex dish thing and put the finished chicken in while i went to the 2nd batch.

meanwhile, the pasta’s cooking in its own pot ready to be served in time when all the chicken was done. the 2nd batch didn’t do as well, since there wasn’t as much chicken, the oil did some popping. it ended up being okay, and nothing caught on fire.

i needed to run the dishwasher, so i was down on plates and almost used a paper plate to serve. (what, it’s just me, i don’t care!) i ended up using a bowl and that worked out better anyway.

the final verdict was the taste, so around 9 pm i was finally able to eat, and it was fantastic. the box says there are 5 servings, but i think i’m only going to be getting 3 servings out of it. there’s not much pasta that comes in the box, so i guess they don’t plan on people eating a lot of the pasta. i might have to try to portion better next time though just to see if i can get the 5 servings.

so Thursday night, i noticed my refrigerator making a clicking sound every few minutes. it was still working, but i knew there was a problem. i googled the problem and realized it was a broken start relay. not immediately finding a how-to, i called to schedule a repair from Sears when i got to work the next morning.

this experience kind of played off of my Subway experience on Thursday. i stopped on my way to Jacob’s to get a sandwich. the guy asked me white or wheat, i told him wheat. he makes my sandwich and gets to the toppings. i tell him “lettuce, tomato, onions”, he puts lettuce, tomato, pickles. i repeat “onions” twice before he figures out onions does not equal pickles. he goes to take them off but i told him i was going to ask for them anyway. when i open the sandwich, he made it on white. hopefully the kid is not looking at subway as a career. anyway, so calling Sears….i tried to schedule one online, but they were giving me a time window of 8 am to 5 pm. whatever. i called the 800 number to hopefully talk to someone and schedule a slimmer window. it gave me the option to schedule a Friday appointment online, but when i called, the guy told me the next available day would be Tuesday. i told him about the available Friday appointment online, but he said he didn’t see that. so i told him i’d call back later and hung up. i went online and scheduled the Friday 8-5 appointment. someone called me about an hour later and said nobody could come Friday, but they could come Saturday. fine, so i agreed to that and figured someone would call me in the morning.

i stayed up most of the night watching the Ike coverage (i was fascinated to see a hurricane’s landfall from the comfort of my home instead of being evacuated). i got up this morning and googled how to fix the start relay. i found this webpage where the guy basically made a picture tutorial on how to fix it. it seemed easy enough, so about 9:15 am i set off to Home Depot to get the replacement part. sadly, HD does not carry any refrigerator spare parts, just spare refrigerators. one of the guys told me about an appliance part supply place, so i took off for the supply store. i called my sister on the way to get the location because all i had was a street name. i found the place and walked in to find two gentlemen discussing appliance brands and the guy behind the counter had a cowboy hat on.

after the other customer left, i explained to the guy behind the counter my problem. i had brought the model number of the fridge but unfortunately he did not have the part in stock. he asked if i had brought the original part, but i hadn’t, so i had to go back home then return with the original part.

the original part:

when i got back he saw that he still did not have the replacement part, but he would be able to help me out with a universal relay, something i’d have to rewire to get to work. we walked over to a rack full of relays and he pulled one off the rack. he opened it then said “i have no idea of your experience level for this” and i told him i didn’t really work on refrigerators, but if he told me how to install it, i’d get it done. he showed me what i’d have to do, which didn’t seem complicated, as long as i kept the wires correct. i wrote down his instructions and thanked him for the part. it was $27, Sears was going to charge me $65 just for coming out, then i assume money for the part.

on my way home i called up the Sears 800 number and cancelled the appointment. i was on hold for almost 10 minutes! the guy asked me why i was cancelling, and i told him “i figured out how to fix the problem and am doing it myself.” this was about 11:30, and no one from Sears had called me to tell me they were coming, so who knows when they would have actually gotten to my house!

i started by taking off the old wires using scissors so i could splice the new relay in. i plugged in the relay to the compressor like i was shown at the supply shop, then plugged in the wires to the capactior. then i spliced the power wires together.

i plugged in the fridge….the compressor didn’t kick on. i called the shop, he asked if i had wired everything and i told him i did, and he said to just wait, but he gave me the number of a guy to call if it didn’t work (he was going to be at the shop until 1). so i waited and watched the Clemson/NC State game, then i went and checked the fridge, still nothing. i looked at the wiring i had done……i had mixed up two wires going into the compressor (there are three). so i changed the wires and plugged in the fridge. SUCCESS! the compressor kicked on and everything works. i fixed the fridge myself for $27.

here’s what all i needed, the utility knife, scissors, and instructions:

i ended up throwing out the milk, juice, and meat that i had in the fridge, but it wasn’t that much. i might throw out more tomorrow if i think i should….but still, I FIXED THE REFRIGERATOR MYSELF! FOR TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS!

i bought a lot of fruit when i stopped at walmart on wednesday. i’ve been eating grapes at almost every opportunity. i’m still waiting for the nectarines to get ripe, and i have strawberries to cut. last night i watched the premiere of 90210 [I KNOW! I KNOW!] (thanks Kari for piquing my interest) and had a tomato and cheese omelet. then i ate grapes. i got up this morning and turned on the news, while eating grapes. you get the idea. i’m almost finished the 2 lbs of grapes i bought on wednesday.

i have read about how great farmers markets are, and i have been to a local one around here and handful of times so far. however, the only things i found that i wanted to purchase were peaches and tomatoes…..there was a lot of squash and cucumbers which i don’t really like. a word to the wise, i thought the white flesh peaches were gross. definitely stick with the traditional orange peaches. i should also tell you i’m probably still considered a novice peach eater, but my opinion still counts!

(the 90210 premiere was exactly what i expected….awful and trashy. however, i’ll probably watch it again during the season since some of the original cast members are on it, along with a couple of people from other series. plus i need to fill the void in the trashy/horribly acted section of my tv viewing time since Jericho got cancelled.)

so the trip home wednesday was fortunately uneventful. there was a bit more traffic than normal, but i was able to stay on I-59 and not have to exit and take my alternate state highway route. there were tons of La. residents on the road obviously, and a few who thought it’d be okay to drive 65 in the left lane. i exclaimed “we’re never going to get home at this rate!” a few times. with the additional cars on the road, the slow drivers in the left lane caused a long line of cars to form in the left lane. also, there were several power and tree trucks caravaning in the right lane, which made the slow left lane drivers even more bothersome. no matter, because there were no accidents or screeching halts.

i stopped at the Picayune walmart to get groceries since i knew the walmart near my house was not open yet. several hundred other people had the same idea i did, so the grocery stop took a little longer than expected.

it’s been nice being home. i’ve done some cleaning in preparation to possibly hosting a Saints party on Sunday. my neighborhood is still under a boil notice (boil water before drinking or cooking with it) which i am hoping gets lifted today. something about the water treatment system got messed up, so i keep checking the parish website for updates. the water thing is the only thing not back to normal. i heard that my neighborhood only lost power for 3 hours on Monday, so that’s awesome. i didn’t lose any food in my fridge, which is a far cry from Katrina.

the only damage to anyone’s house that i know of are my friends zach and faith. they had a tree fall on their house. they were renting the house though, so they just have to move their stuff out and the owner is going to get the house repaired. i say all of that like it’s no big deal, but i know personally that it’s a big deal. fortunately they won’t have to be the ones getting the repairs done.

i went running yesterday and it was insanely humid. it had rained earlier in the afternoon, so i thought it would be nice and cool. it was cool enough, but the humidity made it pretty miserable. i only had to dodge one tree and one power line along my usual 5k route. the weather is supposed to clear up somewhat this weekend, so i have high hopes.

i’m going to finally go home tomorrow. my sister called and said i had electricity back. the water has not been deemed safe to drink yet, but i can deal with that okay. problem is, EVERY other parish except for Orleans is allowed to go back tomorrow. I-59 is only two lanes wide. i have mapped out an alternate route to get back without using the interstate. we’ll see how it goes. i may be calling people to “go into the map” to direct me back because i don’t have a GPS. i’m hoping to be able to clean out my fridge and go to the store to restock. hopefully walmart will be open tomorrow or thursday. i don’t really have much food at the house, so i definitely need to get to a grocery store.

today i was able to get some free chick-fil-a (we got coupons at the game) and the CFA milkshake i had been craving all weekend. birmingham is not such a bad place, so it has now entered into the options for moving.

i’ll post more when i can. hopefully i’ll have internet back too.

last night i got in pretty late from a birthday party, but i was planning on getting tickets for Ryan Adams in ATL in October. this would be the 2nd of two shows for Ryan Adams Road Trip 2008. i fell asleep last night though and did not set an alarm. i woke up this morning in my clothes from the night before at 8:55 am….5 minutes before tickets were going to go on sale because it was 10 am eastern time. i saw the time and said “Thanks God!” i got on the computer and got two tickets, because i had a feeling my friend who i had not heard from still wanted to go, and if not, i got 4th row behind the pit on RA’s side of the stage! yes, that’s right, to go along with my 2nd row on the right side of the stage in Tuscaloosa, for ATL i’ll be a little further back but on the left side of the stage. not bad not bad. TM did the same thing this time and sent me a code for a free iTunes song after gouging me for $12 per ticket ‘convenience’ charges. jerks.

after breakfast, i went out and mowed my lawn. it’s been raining here almost every other day it seems the past couple of weeks, so i hadn’t had a chance to cut my grass with it being wet. so today was tough going because even at 11:00 am, it seemed really hot. i made it through though with the mowing, but came to realize that my weedeater had died yesterday. i was going to have to get a new one to complete the yard work this afternoon.

i was wondering what time Fay would be getting here, and thought it would be this evening, so i actually went out to walmart on a Saturday afternoon. i was hoping i’d be back before any rain started. i went over to Sears and got a new weedeater. i got home and put it together and my gosh, it is so much better than my old one. i’m glad that one burned up! the new one disintegrated everything in its path. i think the sound of my new weedeater motivated the old lady behind me to get her son to weedeat her yard. i don’t know if he lives there or what, but he usually does all her yardwork.

anyway, as i was finishing with the new weedeater, i noticed sometime after mowing the lawn, the old lady behind me had let her dog crap in my yard again. i hate that. it’s not so much that i hate flinging the poo back in her yard (which i do), it’s that she’s so inconsiderate of me. any suggestions to show her who’s boss? i am open to them.

i grilled out with some pork tenderloin, and combined it with mac and cheese and steamed broccoli for a fabulous preseason game meal. the Saints beat the Bengals, and then i went back to watching the Olympics. did you know the world record for 5000m is 12 something minutes? that’s almost 3 miles! that’s crazy!

ok, so that was my rather interesting Saturday. i’m going to bed so i can wake up at 1:30 am to watch the basketball game and maybe water polo. then i’ll go back to sleep for church. i’m dedicated for sure to the live Olympics. no sign of Fay yet, but i figure it’ll be raining sometime tomorrow morning. my yard is ready for it though!

The past two nights my internet has been down at the house, so I have not been able to upload a picture of my new glasses. I’ve also not been able to job search, but at least I found the last version of my resume and will be able to update it. work’s been full of drama lately, and I’m anticipating more drama coming up this fall, so I’m going to see what my options are. And I know I’ve said it before about job searching, and I have looked before, but this time I have a goal to send out 5 resumes by the end of the week. I have no idea what the results will be, but as far as internal job postings, my friends have had it take at least a month before you hear back anything. I was able to find some pretty cool jobs yesterday morning though, so I’m interested to see what happens.

While I have to go without posting pictures, I might as well air some grievances. My car’s cd player has been broken for about a month. I’m talking when you put a disc in, there’s a grinding noise. It’s sad, because now I’m relegated to listening to the radio. The radio isn’t so bad because I really like listening to WWOZ, but sometimes I need some rock music, or at least something different. FM radio in the morning reduces the number of listenable stations by 3 at least, and the same talk show is on TWO different stations! The other station that turns to talk is like listening to an issue of maxim, a complete waste of time that serves no purpose. Then interspersed in the talking, he’ll play a rock song from 1994. speaking of, the supposed “Rock Of New Orleans” has issues with playing anything from within the last 10 years. On a recent trip home last week, we listened for what songs they were playing….5 out of 6 were from BEFORE 1996. i understand if they think the greatest time for modern rock was 1991-1995 (which is still debatable), but who are they to determine that? the Foo Fighters have put out albums since 1995, nobody cares about Silverchair much anymore, and Beck has done better songs since Odelay. the ‘classic’ rock stations are okay, but they play a lot of the same songs. So the past couple of days, I’ve been listening to the country station, getting back in touch with my love for country music that I left behind in 1997. i don’t know when I’ll get the cd player fixed, but right now I’m getting by on songs from Brad, Keith, and Carrie….but I wish I could hear some more Reba. The one thing I don’t like about country, is the songs sometimes are pathetically sad. Sure, I could write a song about how my tractor broke down, my wife left me, my dog got run over by a car, and I ended up passed out drunk in a recliner, but that doesn’t seem to me like a song I want to listen to a sunny day with my windows down.

As an update to the carpool, things have been going pretty well. I have not missed yet! I also enjoy getting home early because I’ve been able to make a few matinee movies. However, I have to deal with an intersection at a truck stop to get to our carpool meeting place every morning. I have seen truckers completely disregard the red light or just pull out and block half the road. I don’t ask much from people when I’m driving, but simple common courtesy would be nice. Of course, in both instances, I flipped them off. It’s not so much that people are doing that to me, but that they care so little about other people, that someone should at least try to hold them accountable. Sitting there patiently while some guy blocks traffic doesn’t teach the guy anything! And of course, the guys who ran the light, they honked their horn at me like I was the one forcing people to slam on their brakes because I was too arrogant to wait 90 seconds at a red light….my bad!

And finally, last night I went to walmart to get some groceries, when I noticed an older gentleman drinking one of those single chocolate milk bottles while he was shopping. When I saw him on the soup aisle, he was almost finished with it, and I thought “I bet he’s going to finish that milk and throw the bottle away before he gets to the front of the store!” (I’m kind of cynical when it comes to the general public) I did not follow him to see if that actually happened, but I figured it did after I talked with the cashier. The walmart by my house is being renovated, so they’re updating the freezer section, redoing the floor, etc. I asked her if we’d finally be getting self checkout machines, but she told me we would not because there’s too much theft. I told her about the old guy and the milk, and she said “you wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff we see here”. Again, I don’t ask much from people, but for crying out loud, take the time to buy the 99 cent bottle of milk! And why….WHY do those thieves keep self checkout out of my walmart? Isn’t someone supposed to be watching the self checkout stations to make sure people aren’t stealing anything? At least gas prices went down 10 cents yesterday, so I have that.

so yesterday i went to early church at 8:15 am and was again subjected to another boring sermon. i’ve been pretty frustrated with my home church, but have tried other local churches to no success. so i have started going to my home church since i am also helping out with the youth group. it’s not only that the sermons are boring, but most of the subject matter is low hanging fruit type stuff, and i expect more. also, it’d be nice if the pastors didn’t read all of their prayers instead of just speaking from the heart. more on this later….

i got home and made french toast again, and took Adriene’s suggestion for the strawberries ON the french toast. i didn’t exactly do that, but i did buy powdered sugar to use on half the french toast, and the other regular syrup. the strawberries were placed on the plate as a sort of Maginot Line between the two. if there was an Iron Chef French Toast, this would be one of my five dishes.

i went to youth group, and part of the evening was spent playing charades. not only charades, blind folded drawing charades. when coming up with the topics for the other team to draw, i used movie and tv show titles, like Field of Dreams (which one of the dad’s COULD NOT DRAW) and Reading Rainbow (which the other team got right). however, other suggestions were harder for the kids including Rocky Balboa. i heard more than one kid go “who is that?” WHO IS THAT? WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHO ROCKY IS? oh, that’s right, they were born AFTER the original four movies came out. ouch.

while at church, i was invited to the newly formed young adult group. i’ve been in young adult groups at the church before, even tried leading them. we never got support from church leadership, and the last time i tried to lead one 3 years ago, nobody came. so i had kind of given up, but apparently a new group has formed, and they have a similar opinion of the current pastoral leadership. i’m going to see about it, but i’m not going to get my hopes up.

i came home to a roast in the crock pot, which was the first time i had used my crock pot ever…..even though my mom had given it to me at least a year ago. the roast came out fabulous, and the folks who ate it enjoyed it. success! (sorry, no pictures)

in other news, i’m going to get new glasses (!!!)…..story about that tomorrow.

so this morning i woke up and wanted to make something to go with the fresh strawberries i had cut up last night, so i thought i’d try to make french toast. i’ve been on sort of a roll lately, i made an omelet the other night that came out fantastic. i cut up a tomato and added some cheddar cheese for the insides. it was marvelous. sorry, i didn’t take a picture, but i should have, because it came out that good.

[sidebar: the two skillets (hard anodized calphlaon, the 10" and 12" were packed together at the store) i had bought at BBB about a month ago have been great to have since the move up to stainless steel cookware. using a stainless steel skillet for eggs was just too hard.]

anyway, this morning i looked up how to make french toast. i had never made it before, even though i’ve bought the ingredients before. i usually go with the Vive La French Toast at IHOP by default, but i don’t know if i’d call myself a french toast connoisseur. i found a recipe that included something like 6 different things, a couple of which i did not have. i picked out the ingredients i thought would be good (ground cinnamon and vanilla) and used those. i didn’t measure anything, because i’m trying to be a ‘good’ chef like that. i scrambled two eggs and added the ground cinnamon and vanilla.

i used the wheat bread i had, and realized after the first piece that i’d have to flip and remove the bread almost instantaneously because the bread started to fall apart if i left it in too long.

the first piece i didn’t really let the excess egg completely drain off, so i had a little bit of fried egg in the pan. no matter, the piece still came out fine. i had enough egg mixture for three pieces.

the cinnamon and vanilla added a great flavor to the french toast (i feel like Bobby Flay saying that). i pulled out the strawberries and had a great Sunday morning breakfast.

and now that i know french toast isn’t that big a deal, i figure i can make it more often. it’s way better than slumming it with frozen waffles, even if they are Eggo.