Notoriously Nice ®

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!

Champ briefly made a new friend today.

I've known for several years now that the neighbors three doors down have a dog. I hear it bark. I hear it scramble around the deck. But I've never seen it until this evening when it escaped. He's a beautiul Golden Retriever. And friendly. He ran straight to Champ and me. He smelled Champ's butt. Champ smelled his. They must of liked what they smelled. Then the Mister came and dragged him back home.

Me: That's the first time I've seen your dog.

Him:

Why would anyone own a dog, particularly such a large one, yet never, ever take it for a walk? Champ and I walk several times a day and we know every dog within barking distance. TJ, Guapo, Molly, Zack, Leo, Bob, Happy, the little yip dog at the other end of the street, the other Champ (he's a fearless dauchshund). Yet we've never seen this one.

I love it when rich people fight

Eight years ago the rich people who live on Lockwood Drive complained about the City Marina's plan to extend two docks to accommodate big yachts owned by richer people because it would obstuct their view of the Ashley River.

Now Arianna Huffington and Bill Keller are fighting over who has the bigger dick.

It's official. New York can blame Justine for the blizzards!

Justine and I went to New York for Christmas and a blizzard dumped 20" of snow on the city. Due to cancelled flights I got back to Charleston a day later than planned. Justine got back to Austin two days later.

Justine flew back to New York on Monday and was supposed to fly home today. Instead she'll make it back Sunday because a 2nd blizzard brought 19" of snow.

Now I'm not the brightest bulb on the string but even I know that 20" + 19" = It's Justine's fault!

"How the hell did I end up in Canada? I hate fucking Canada!"

So far only Season 1 of the brilliant British TV series ‘Shameless’ is available on DVD here in the US. (Netflix has it.) American TV has a checkered history when it comes to adapting British series (who can forget the Americanized versions of Men Behaving Badly, Coupling, Life on Mars? Evidently everyone) so it was with some trepidation that I’ve watched the first two episodes of Showtime’s American version of ‘Shameless’. The first episode was great but it was pretty much a carbon copy of the Brit first episode.  Fortunately Episode 2 headed down an original, hilarious path. Definitely Must See TV, even if you have to wait for the DVD's!

I don't make resolutions but...

I'll try to make art this year.

This is an earlier attempt.

Kentucky Dusk