Separated at Birth

I don't subscribe to our local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution.  There is just not enough information contained in the paper to warrant the expense.  That, and, the Sunday comics just aren't what they used to be.  I do, however, follow the local paper online and sometimes, it just makes me laugh.

Here is the first example:

Honestly, I don't know whether someone did this on purpose, or it was just a coincidence of their random story/photo link generator.  I would hope that the original photographer and stylist of Ms. Zolciak was not planning on her head shot being placed next to a classic Reuben sandwich photo, but the similarities are just too close to not to be overlooked.  What with her hair of golden sauerkraut, the creamy cheekbone blush of Thousand Island dressing, and the lapel flower of the finest pastrami, one just has to wonder.

The second example comes today in the wake of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.  Our beloved AJC has decided that the photo of the shooter and the drug confession of Andre Agassi should appear close together on the screen.

I added the Darth Vader unmasked.  Still, the similarities are pretty strong...I'm just sayin'

Sunday Dinner

Sunny days in north central GA today, so after an early morning rising due to the time change, we headed out for church, a trip to Costco (to see if it is still worth it), and then off on a walk to the park to toss the football around. Wish I had pictures, or movies, to post for that because Charlie was killing me with his throws. I keep waiting on some scout to come up to me and ask about him playing for his team. Ah someday. 


After that we headed back home and had the craving for scallops.  The wife and daughter took a quick trip to Trader Joe's and came back with lots of fun things that would become dinner.

Starting with these beauties that were salted and sauteed in a little olive oil until browned on both sides, then removed from the pan and kept warm.

Following the browning (there they are in the background), and subsequent removal, onions were sauteed, garlic was added, a little white wine was added and reduced until nearly dry.

Shortly after the previous step, white beans were added with some basil, hot flake pepper, and chicken broth. Cooked just until hot.

Ahh! Where did all the lovely pan juice and bean mixture go??? Spinach hides everything, but only for a minute as the entire package cooked down to nothingness. Actually, when it was all done, I didn't think that there'd be enough for three to eat. Oh well, it was good anyway!

This idea came from a link on What's for Meat?, who got it from Cooking Light in March 2009. Good find, but wish it had a little more depth of flavor perhaps from using chicken stock instead of broth, or adding a small pat of butter at the end to tighten up the sauce and give it all a nice shine.  Also, it would have been great with a nub of crusty bread for sopping purposes.  Served with an adequate, but not great, Malbec.

After dinner was a quick clean up and clearing of the kitchen to take some clean water and make it dirtier and dirtier.

 

 

Do you think I need a new/larger pot?? We'll return to this little fella in a week or so.

See you then.

Fall in north Georgia

Well, couple of weeks ago we did the annual trip to the mountains north of Ellijay, GA. I can't remember just how long we've been coming up here but I do know that we used to come up here when we moved to Atlanta in 1991.

Although many years have passed, we still enjoy coming up to the pumpkin patch in the month of October for a morning of long drives and pretty views. It has, as many things do, evolved into a group trip with the older of the many Supper Clubs we belong to which has grown to 12 from the original number of us who venture out. Very early wake up calls on a Sunday morning aren't that fun, but once you get there, you realize why you get there so early.

Mixed in there is the requisite chasing of the kids, hay ride through the woods with the Christian pumpkins, popcorn, pumpkin/cream cheese rolls, pictures, pictures, and more pictures.

Naturally, after a trip to pumpkin world, it's off to apple world.


Couple of shots of the interior...

All sorts of apple pastries (which I did not partake in)...











Again, a trip up north is not worth it unless you are able to stop for some good que. Just outside of downtown Ellijay is one of the better ones: Col. Poole's BBQ and his hill of pigs!

The good Col. has been doing his que for more than a couple of minutes and has earned the respect of every local, state and national politician, radio personality, TV personality who graces his front door. Guess if you're famous enough, you get a piggy on the hill. Since this was Sunday, and I had just finished the SQL Saturday seminar (where BBQ was served for lunch), it seemed that BBQ was in order yet again. Here's your basic chopped pork plate, BBQ beans, mac-n-cheese, Texas toast and somewhere is an unsweet tea. Good stuff.



Overall, another successful trip to the mountains once all the clouds and fog of the morning had burned off.

See you next time from the road!

SQL Saturday

Welcome to Gainsville State College in spacious Gainsville, GA. This is the second in the series of "help yourself" professional development. The first was a couple of months ago when I took IT Project Management from Global Knowledge. That was a replacement for the class I had to miss in April because of emergency gall bladder surgery.

So, that's about it for now. Lunch was from Sonny's, not the best for me, but better than nothing!!

The HTC Test

This is a test message the new HTC TouchPro2. Now we need to test the ability to insert photos that are saved in the local album.

Germany to Hickory Flat...In one weekend

Well, it's been a long hot weekend, yet again. Thank goodness it was a long weekend or else I think the whole family would have gone nuts. Of course, the omnipresent threat of tropical storms and hurricanes threatened the entire south, thankfully, there wasn't much that came of any of it.

Deutschland. Ahh, from our very first trip there back in 1999 it has always held a soft spot in my heart. Even further back in college I got the bug for the German language in freshman year and, amazingly enough, a lot of the vocabulary has stuck in my head. Oh what a different world it could have been if I'd stayed an international business student and concentrated on my German a little bit more.

Okay, so other than a fresh hot pretzel from a street vendor in NYC on a crisp fall day, German pretzels may just have the edge when it comes a better environment in which to eat them. Perhaps it's just the beer that comes along with them that gives them the edge. No matter. They are easy and fun to make and, suprisingly, don't take that long either.

The steps for this one came from the foodgawker web site. Just search for pretzels - this one is for the Hellboy version. They are a little different because they contain a fair amount of whole wheat flour, so they come with a slightly more nutty taste when cooked off. I'll just run through some of the basic steps below:

The basic steps start with mixing scalded milk with sugar and tossing in the yeast. The recipe doesn't mention it, but I did let it sit before blending the whole mess together to let the yeast bloom a little bit. After that, add in a little salt and mix. To that mixture, add the whole wheat flour and beat to combine. Slowly add in the white flour and begin to knead with the dough hook until combined and pulling away from the sides.


After that, let them rise for about 15 minutes, cut, twist, boil, bake. My only complaint/comment would be to let them rise a little bit more, and I ended up cutting too few knots from the risen mass of dough. This led to having too large of a twist that almost look like pretzel rolls. Not a bad thing, but the ropes could have been twice as long. Oh well, this was a practice batch for now. The real ones will be brought to the neighborhood Oktoberfest in a few weeks!



Yum!!!

Hickory Flat

Hickory Flat, for those in the know, is a great northern Atlanta rural area, that's soon to be urbanized. Like it or not, progress will come. There is no stopping it. It is among these cow pastures that our friends have decided to lay their roots for now. We've known these folks since the olden times when my wife used to work with one of them and we discovered a common interest in cooking and hosting parties for small groups. Afterall, I grew up in a household of supper club members, so I was used to it and this was just a natural extension of my childhood into adulthood. Good thing too, because our members are some damn good cooks!

So, now that summer has begun it's slide into fall and the kids are all back in school, we figured it was time to take the group out of moth balls and get back into the kitchen this past weekend. Of course we spoke up and mentioned that we'd been on a cooking binge lately and wouldn't mind making apps and, naturally, that led to instant brain freeze as to what to make. There are just too many food blogs and not enough time to read them all, so we did what all good cooks do when forced into a corner, make stuff up.

We'd seen a couple of good things in books and magazines, but couldn't decide on which would be best. In the end we came up with chicken salad on a spinch leaf with corn bread crackers. Sorry, no photos of this one because the wife was making this while I was building a dog house for the son's stuffed animals! The second thing we did was pulled straight out of thin air: Puff pastry rounds with tomato and cheese. It's inspiration was from a Giada recipe that had pizza dough and tomatoes and cheese, but we totally switched things up. Here's the basic process:


Starting with a sheet of thawed puff pastry that has been docked, floured and rolled out to 1/8 inch. I covered it with store bought pesto. Make sure to dock the pastry enough, I didn't and it ended up puffing up too much in the middle of the rounds.

Using a 1.5 inch biscuit cutter, I made them into rounds and placed them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Then entire lot then got a covering of Asiago cheese, salt, pepper, 1/2 of a cherry tomato, and a smattering of olive oil. Then into the oven for about 17 minutes, just keep an eye on them, the pesto has a tendancy to burn just a smidge - nothing horrible, just with the cheese and pesto on there, it may crisp up a little more than you'd like. When they are done, a little more fresh Asiago for a garnish and platter them up!

Tablescaping and Dinner

J, in addition to being a wonderful cajun type cook, is also a wonderful designer. We keep threatening to submit some of his party stylings to a magazine in order to get him recognized by someone other then a bunch of his drunk friends. When I mentioned that I had started a food, it was decided that we must start including his party tables, so here you go along with some good food porn from the night's dinner.

On with the food!! Dinner started, like many other meals at the beginning with a salad course. I don't know how the dressing was made, but it was a creamy, almost green goddess type dressing with a great flavor of cilantro. This was poured over greens with sliced red pepper and a wonderful corn mixture. I'll have to remember not to drink so much before dinner that I forget to as what was in everything as it's being made. Anyway, yummy, yummy, yummy.

The dressing and salad being combined. Ahh, a waterfall of corn, or would that be a cornfall?

Next up, the main course of course!

I'll spare you the assembly, J was not on his best timing night ever. Oh well, I won't say it's never happened to me, most nights it happens to me - what are you going to do? Let me just say it was completely worth the wait. J was inspired by a favorite place in Atlanta and remembered their lobster stuffed burittos, luckily the recipe is on the web. Not so lucky enough for me to remember the fool places' name, however. That, along with a wonderful corn salad with tomato and avacado and some Spanish rice to round out the plate. Insanely good food, worth every minute and calorie.

Not to be outshone by the main course, dessert arrived in a playful manner in the form of cupcakes! Not just one kind, but two: chocolate and peanut butter and chocolate and white chocolate. Being a fan of Funny Bones, the old Drake's type, I chose the CPB cake.

I chose wisely. Nothing better than that good combination of sweet chocolate and salty PB. Nothing low fat about it.

So there it is, two continents spanned in less than six hours through the magic of food and fossil fuels. I can't wait until the next meeting of the group!!!

Chin-chin!

Finding your bearings

Well, it's been close to a year and I finally got word the other day that I am about to become an official GIS professional. Good news after nearly twenty years of working in the industry.

The certification process is worse than filling out your tax form and requires more backup than an audit. All in all, definitely worth it and now I can put some all important looking letters after my name.

For those who don't know, here's the info from certification institute:

A GISP is a certified geographic information systems (GIS) Professional who has met the minimum standards for ethical conduct and professional practice as established by the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI)

So, hooray for me! Now go out and have a beer to celebrate.

Prosit!