Notoriously Nice ®

Memes survived their 15 minutes?

I stole this from Carly because it's about food.

A: is for Apple, what’s your favorite variety?

For fresh I like apples that are slighter sweeter than tart. Gala and Fuji are two varieties that come to mind. For cooking? Anything with Rome in the name. Rome, Red Rome, Rome Beauty. They hold up well when baked.

B: is for Bread, regardless of nutrition, calories, or whole grains what is your favorite type to have a nice big piece of?

Salt rising. It’s a Kentucky thing. I buy it whenever I’m there. I still have half a loaf left from my last visit. God intended it be eaten one way - toasted and slathered with butter.

C: is for Cereal what is your favorite kind currently (just one!)

Oatmeal. Steel-cut or rolled. Doesn’t matter. The texture is different but the nutrition is the same.

D: is for Doughnuts, you might not currently be eating them but what kind do you fancy?

Krispy Kreme, still warm from the fryer.

E: is for Eggs, how would you like yours prepared?

Fried, scrambled, poached, soft boiled.

F: is for Fat Free, what is your favorite fat free product?

Yogurt. I have one every morning.

G: is for Groceries, where do you purchase yours at?

Walmart for the staples. Bi-Lo, Publix, and the Pig for anything Walmart doesn’t have. Earth Fare if I’m down that way. I’d go to Whole Foods if it was on the west side of town.

H: is for Hot Beverages, what is your favorite hot drink?

Tea. PG Tips or Typhoo. Two cups to start my day. More later if I need the bump.

I: is for Ice Cream, pick a favorite flavor and add a fun topping.

Chocolate. No topping needed.

J: is for Jams or Jellies, do you eat them, and if so what kind and flavor?

Tart. Thick-cut marmalade or red currant.

K: is for Kashi, name your favorite Kashi product?

Honey Toasted Oat. Cherrios with a cachet.

L: is for Lunch, what was yours today?

I haven’t fixed lunch yet.

M: is for microwave, what is your favorite microwave meal/snack?

Healthy Choice®

N: is for nutrients, do you like carbs, fats, or proteins best?

I tend to watch the fat and sodium content more than carbs or protein.

O: is for oil, what kind do you like to use?

It depends on the use. Olive or canola.

P: is for protein, how do you get yours?

Beans and lentils!

Q: is for Quaker, how do you like your oats?

I covered this back at C.

R: is for roasting, what is your favorite thing to roast?

Delmonico roast (aka rib eye roast). Rare.

S: is for sandwich, what’s your favorite kind?

It’s tempting to say anything with bacon but really it’s roast pork or lamb on white bread with Durkee sauce.

T: is for travel, how do you handle eating while traveling?

One reason I travel is to eat in great restaurants!

U: is for unique, what is one of your weirdest food combos?

Coming up dry on this one. Your idea of weird may be my idea of yum.

V: is for vitamins, what kind do you take?

Several. At my age I’m hoping they will make up for a life misspent.

W: is for wasabi, yay or nay?

In small amounts. If I want bold I usually reach for the Texas Pete.

X: is for XC Foodie, why is she so awesome?

Who? Seriously, who?

Y: is for youth, what food reminds you of your childhood?

There are so many. Green beans cooked until they are dead, hot browns, country ham, soft boiled eggs on toast that Mom made me when I wasn’t feeling well...

Z: is for zucchini, how do you prepare it?

Zucchini is the vegetable that every gardener has too much of and doesn’t know what to do with it.  It’s a filler that tastes like whatever you cook it with. My favorite way to prepare it is to toss it on the compost pile.

 

Where is a 5-year old computer whiz when you need one?

Because Amazon refuses to believe that I have Firefox 4.0 on my laptop (or any browser as it turns out) I downloaded the new Lady Gaga album to my old laptop in the office. From there I could sync it with my iPad and Touch. After all iTunes is iTunes, right? Wrong.

When I plugged in my Touch (and iPad) I got this message - “The iPod (iPad) cannot be used because it requires iTunes 10.1 or later. Go to www.itunes.com to download the latest version of iTunes.”

I had nothing better to do so I went to itunes.com and downloaded iTunes 10.2.2. Easy peasy. Except that when I tried to install 10.2.2 I got this message - “Cannot Open ‘Install itunes.pkg’. This package type requires Mac OS X 10.5. OK?”

No, not OK. The old laptop is running Tiger 10.4.11 and no matter if you continue to support it or not, Steve, it does what I need it to do. Except this.

So for now Lady Gaga is in the office, doing stretching exercises, and hoping to be heard in the rest of the house.

Any suggestions on how to get out of this update Catch 22?

The world will start ending 8 hours from now in Kiribati.

Kiribati. You still have time. Time for what? Beats me but I have lots of beer in the fridge.

Tick Tock

It's now tomorrow in all of Australia and much of east Asia. Have you bought your beer yet?

The countdown continues

It's now tomorrow in New Zealand.

I'm doing my part to save the planet

I've already changed all of my light bulbs to CFL's. I take my resusable bags to the grocery stores. I reduce, reuse, and recycle whenever I can. I mulch the grass instead of bagging it (I admit, that's lazyness on my part). Since I'm a recluse I only have to buy gas once a month. What else is left?

Now that it's summer here in South Carolina I've set the thermostat to 78°, that's 4°warmer than last year. It takes some getting used to, but I think I'll survive.

Your End of the World! ™ countdown update #1

As I write this it is now 2 AM, May 21 in the Line Islands Time Zone. (Think the Republic of Kiribati, somewhere in the Pacific.) 16 hours and counting down. If we cut Harold Camping some slack because he doesn't understand daylight savings time it might be 17 hours.

I need crowdsourcing.

It won’t happen until late this year after I’ve eaten my way through New York, Austin, St. Louis, and Chicago one last time but I plan on making a trial run at being a vegetarian. It won’t be because of health or ethical reasons. It will be because I’d like to find out if, and how long, I can go without slapping a ribeye on the grill or frying up a half-pound of bacon. Mmm, bacon. I almost talked myself out of this.

The delay will also give me time to eat the almost 5 lbs of Wagyu beef I have in the freezer (Thank you Allan and Alison), collect recipes so I don’t get stumped at mealtime, and stock up on things I don’t normally keep in the pantry. (I only drive out of Charleston on I-26 if I’m going to Kentucky but a trip to H&L might be necessary.) There also may be some appliances that would make my vegetarian life easier such as a food processor or blender. I might even look at rice cookers, although I’m not sure why. Rice is easy to cook in a saucepan but many of my friends own cookers and love them. And since Charlestonians eat so much rice, cookers are available in many stores

Before you can ask, I won’t be going vegan. I can’t image life without yogurt, milk, butter, cheese, and the occasional egg. I can’t imagine life without bacon, either, but I’ll deal with the cravings when they happen. And I won’t be doing this hoping I get a book or movie deal out of it. Julie Powell got lucky. Only half of Julie and Julia was worth watching and it wasn’t the Julie half.

Now comes the part where I need your help. I need recipes. The only purely vegetarian cookbooks I own are Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Diane Kochilas’s The Greek Vegetarian. A nice start but I know that there are other options, particularly ethnic ones. And searching Google for vegetarian recipes returned almost 8 million hits. At 62 I don’t have enough years left to check all of those out. Whether you are a vegetarian or not, if you have favorite meatless recipes I’d love it if you would share them with me. You can email me at notoriouslynice at gmail dot com or send me a message on Facebook (I’m Mike Courtney there.) I won’t promise that I’ll use them, but I’ll try my best. Crockpot recipes would be great since I actually own one of those.

To make things easier here are the foods I don’t like and those I love. I hate beets. No further discussion. I’m not fond of cucumbers but will eat them in small doses. The same goes for cilantro. There’s a fine line between just enough and too damn much.

Other than those, I love just about everything. I love rice, beans, and noodles of all sorts. I figure those, alone, make a great base for many recipes. I don’t need help with breakfast - oatmeal, fruit, and yogurt have that covered.

Because sometimes I don’t feel like cooking I’d also like to hear about Charleston restaurants that have a good selection of vegetarian choices on their menus. Especially those West of the  Ashley. I’m not going to go all OCD so if I’m on a date or dining with family and my only menu choice is to eat meat or the side salad, I’ll eat the meat but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I’m a recluse and have almost as few virtual friends as real ones so I’d appreciate it you would pass my plea on to your friends who love to cook. Tell them I’m notoriously nice and would be a good online friend. :-)

Your viewer's guide to the End of the World! ™

Harold Camping says that the End of the World! ™ will begin with a massive earthquake on May 21 at 6 PM local time in the first time zone. He goes on to say, “And then it will follow the sun around for 24 hours. As each area of the world gets to that point of 6 p.m. on May 21, then it will happen there, and until it happens, the rest of the world will be standing far off and witnessing the horrible thing that is happening.”

You can follow the action by subscribing to the USGS RSS feed for 5+ earthquakes. Of course on any given day there are multiple 5+ earthquakes on the western Pacific rim, and a few that are 6+, so be on the lookout for those pesky 7’s and 8’s. Maybe even 9’s or 10’s. How exciting would that be?

Time zones get screwy in the summer with some countries springing forward an hour and some not so I'm not exactly sure where 6 PM on the 21st first occurs but here in the eastern US we'll have at least 16 hours (and maybe 17) to party before the End.

Party on!