If I'm not dead-ass wrong, this is post #450. Yay me!
Anyhoo, my wife and I were watching Iron Chef America, and as we're watching I'm always sort of saying "if it were me, I would cook it this way..." Every so often I suggest that I could totally cook some crazy BS gourmet meal with some ingredient as the "secret ingredient" like on the show. (BTW, we hate that show, because we never see the challenger win. Ever.)
So in the next week or so, I'm going to prepare for my wife a 5-course meal, with the secret ingredient being...
...
... CHERRIES!
The plan is that I'm going to cook like normal for most of the week, and I'm going to set aside a small portion of the protein from each meal, and then make a crazy gourmet meal one night.
No, I don't know what I'm cooking either, but what the hell. I can make anything taste good!
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
More adventures in cooking
So since I bought the new grill a few weeks ago I've been cooking on it probably 2-3 days a week, easy.
We're at the end of the pay cycle this week, so there's a little less stuff in the fridge and freezer for me to be creative with, and I don't want to repeat myself or anything. I look in the freezer, I see hamburgers and a London broil and... a whole chicken. Hey! Grilled chicken it is! I break out the knives and I hack the chicken apart. I've got crazy knife skills, so when I'm done it looks just like the pictures online.
Well... not just like the pictures. My chicken is BIGGER. Not to be deterred, I slap some olive oil and seasonings on it, and fling it onto the grill. It cooks up really well, but because of the size of it we wind up splitting one breast and we had the other 7 pieces of chicken left over. This was Monday night? Yeah? OK.
So Tuesday night we had burgers I grilled up. Last night, I'm looking at all that chicken and wondering what I can do to make it in to something new and exciting, rather than simply warming it back up and serving it. I looked around and found some Tandoori paste. That's sort of a puree of ginger, garlic, tamarind, cumin, and other stuff. It is red.
It is VERY red. When you use it as a marinade, it gives the meat a very bright red color. Sort of the color of spare ribs from the Chinese take-out places. It is good looking and yummy and whatever... go with it. I deboned the chicken pieces and cut them into bite-sized chunks and threw them in the skillet.
On the other hand... when you don't have time to marinade it, and you just mix the paste in some chicken stock and simmer until the liquid thickens, you get something else. It tastes just as good, but it looks like...
ummm...
welllll...
... OK, it looks like raw bloody red meat. OK, it looks like Captain Rhodes at the end of "Day of the Dead" where he gets ripped open.
And that's what we had to eat last night, over some saffron yellow rice. A little scary, but yummy.
At least I know what we're eating for dinner on Halloween!
We're at the end of the pay cycle this week, so there's a little less stuff in the fridge and freezer for me to be creative with, and I don't want to repeat myself or anything. I look in the freezer, I see hamburgers and a London broil and... a whole chicken. Hey! Grilled chicken it is! I break out the knives and I hack the chicken apart. I've got crazy knife skills, so when I'm done it looks just like the pictures online.
So Tuesday night we had burgers I grilled up. Last night, I'm looking at all that chicken and wondering what I can do to make it in to something new and exciting, rather than simply warming it back up and serving it. I looked around and found some Tandoori paste. That's sort of a puree of ginger, garlic, tamarind, cumin, and other stuff. It is red.
On the other hand... when you don't have time to marinade it, and you just mix the paste in some chicken stock and simmer until the liquid thickens, you get something else. It tastes just as good, but it looks like...
ummm...
welllll...
... OK, it looks like raw bloody red meat. OK, it looks like Captain Rhodes at the end of "Day of the Dead" where he gets ripped open.
And that's what we had to eat last night, over some saffron yellow rice. A little scary, but yummy.
At least I know what we're eating for dinner on Halloween!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The perfect is the enemy of the good
It is a constant problem, and one that I'm sure I share with many of my readers. Sometimes when I'm faced with a task I find myself frozen by the prospect of getting started, because the effort involved in getting it 100% the way I want is more than I'm willing to deal with. So instead of just doing a little something, I find myself doing fuck-all for days or even weeks on end. I also start thinking about stuff I want to buy to make the project even cooler, and I don't always have the money for it. I'm so concerned with what the perfect solution would be that I refuse to get started on any workable solutions.
Dealing with cleaning up my office has been one of those things. It started with the whole business with the building of the new computer, where I've had spare parts and driver discs and boxes and packaging and screws and nuts and tools and a million things strewn all over the place. Then I had a bit where I accidentally knocked the blades of my electric razor into the trash, and I had to carefully pull trash out of the trash can... and some of the trash was piled up next to the can. You know, on account of how if I started cleaning, I would also have to deal with the rest of the mess.
Somewhere in my head, I have a very hard time with dealing with just one small bit of a job, with just doing a little bit here and there, without getting overwhelmed by the whole thing. I've had to come up with little tricks like visualizing imaginary grid squares on the floor, and just dealing with one square at a time. Here and now, I started throwing things in boxes just as fast as I could, and dragging those boxes out of my office as fast as I could. Now, instead of dealing with a few hundred individual items, I've got four boxes to deal with.
Right now, I'm dealing with a box that is mostly CDs. I lost my backup copies of them on hard drive, so I'm re-ripping them to a new hard drive. When that box is done I've got three boxes of tools, packaging and manuals for parts that I may or may not need to keep for warranty/return purchases, and a million cables that I may or may not need to hold onto. The plus side is that my office is usable, there's no trash on the floor, and the overwhelming work is reduced to bits that I can actually deal with.
Only 250 more CDs before I get started on box #2...
Dealing with cleaning up my office has been one of those things. It started with the whole business with the building of the new computer, where I've had spare parts and driver discs and boxes and packaging and screws and nuts and tools and a million things strewn all over the place. Then I had a bit where I accidentally knocked the blades of my electric razor into the trash, and I had to carefully pull trash out of the trash can... and some of the trash was piled up next to the can. You know, on account of how if I started cleaning, I would also have to deal with the rest of the mess.
Somewhere in my head, I have a very hard time with dealing with just one small bit of a job, with just doing a little bit here and there, without getting overwhelmed by the whole thing. I've had to come up with little tricks like visualizing imaginary grid squares on the floor, and just dealing with one square at a time. Here and now, I started throwing things in boxes just as fast as I could, and dragging those boxes out of my office as fast as I could. Now, instead of dealing with a few hundred individual items, I've got four boxes to deal with.
Right now, I'm dealing with a box that is mostly CDs. I lost my backup copies of them on hard drive, so I'm re-ripping them to a new hard drive. When that box is done I've got three boxes of tools, packaging and manuals for parts that I may or may not need to keep for warranty/return purchases, and a million cables that I may or may not need to hold onto. The plus side is that my office is usable, there's no trash on the floor, and the overwhelming work is reduced to bits that I can actually deal with.
Only 250 more CDs before I get started on box #2...
Saturday, July 17, 2010
How Joe built a Computer: Part 3
Well... that was EASY!!!!
So, if you've been following, I had my new computer sort of running, and I went to the closest computer store (an hour away!) and picked up a big pile of stuff. Here's how it went down:
First off, I took the stock cooling fan off of the CPU and cleaned off the old thermal paste. I applied fresh paste, slapped on the new big heat sink, and fired the computer back up. I let it run for a little while, watched some YouTube videos, just to put a load on the processor and make sure that the new heat sink was dispersing heat properly before I did anything else.
Next, I connected the new 500GB hard drive to the motherboard and power supply. I inserted the Windows 7 disc and installed it. That took... like basically no time at all. It was the fastest, smoothest install of an operating system I've ever done. It was so fast that I went ahead and installed the two video cards without taking a break. I had to download the latest drivers, but that wasn't too bad. I fired it up and everything works.
YOU HEAR THAT? EVERYTHING WORKS!!!
I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, since it only costs students $30 more and has more options, and I don't have to deal with the "system builder" restrictions that I have on the Windows 7 I bought from the store.
I also installed a game to test things out. Crysis is the name of the game, and it is a notorious resource hog. The joke going around was that NASA's supercomputers could only run the game on high settings for 10 minutes before they crashed. I was able to run Crysis at Very High settings for 10 minutes, got acceptable frame rates, and the computer didn't come close to overheating. I'm got a real winner on my hands here.
It IS a bit loud with the extra case fans I bought. I'm going to order a couple more RAM sticks next week, and I'll add a $30 fan controller to the order. That way, I can turn down the fans, or even turn them off completely, except when I'm running programs that stress the system.
Other than that, I think I'm done!
So, if you've been following, I had my new computer sort of running, and I went to the closest computer store (an hour away!) and picked up a big pile of stuff. Here's how it went down:
First off, I took the stock cooling fan off of the CPU and cleaned off the old thermal paste. I applied fresh paste, slapped on the new big heat sink, and fired the computer back up. I let it run for a little while, watched some YouTube videos, just to put a load on the processor and make sure that the new heat sink was dispersing heat properly before I did anything else.
Next, I connected the new 500GB hard drive to the motherboard and power supply. I inserted the Windows 7 disc and installed it. That took... like basically no time at all. It was the fastest, smoothest install of an operating system I've ever done. It was so fast that I went ahead and installed the two video cards without taking a break. I had to download the latest drivers, but that wasn't too bad. I fired it up and everything works.
YOU HEAR THAT? EVERYTHING WORKS!!!
I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, since it only costs students $30 more and has more options, and I don't have to deal with the "system builder" restrictions that I have on the Windows 7 I bought from the store.
I also installed a game to test things out. Crysis is the name of the game, and it is a notorious resource hog. The joke going around was that NASA's supercomputers could only run the game on high settings for 10 minutes before they crashed. I was able to run Crysis at Very High settings for 10 minutes, got acceptable frame rates, and the computer didn't come close to overheating. I'm got a real winner on my hands here.
It IS a bit loud with the extra case fans I bought. I'm going to order a couple more RAM sticks next week, and I'll add a $30 fan controller to the order. That way, I can turn down the fans, or even turn them off completely, except when I'm running programs that stress the system.
Other than that, I think I'm done!
Friday, July 16, 2010
How Joe built a Computer: Part 2
So, in part one of the series, I had just assembled the parts I had on hand. Computer tower, power supply, motherboard, processor, RAM, and then I shoved in the video card from my old computer. Hooked up all the power connections, pressed the ON button...
... and nothing happens. Press it again. Nothing happens. Press it a bunch more times...
***POP***
Smoke starts coming out of the computer. It turns out that my old computer was fine, and the video card was the bad part causing it to not start up. Luckily, I had an ancient video card in my office, and I hooked it up, pressed the button...
... and nothing much happened. The power actually came on, but all I got was an error code on the motherboard's LED display. So, not sure what was wrong, I unhooked the RAM and processor, and sent them back to the store. Two weeks later, I got the replacement parts, hooked them up...
... SUCCESS!!! Something actually happened! This is where I found out that when you move a hard drive from one computer to another computer, Windows says NO. Without an operating system, a computer isn't much use, so I downloaded a free Linux operating system so I could get online, and that's what I've been using. Yeah, I spent $800 on computer bits and I'm running it off of a 8GB USB stick. Great fun, right?
Anyhoo, today I picked up a big pile of parts, which should get me close to completing the project. A picture would be nice, so here it is:
That's what I bought today. A pair of hot-shit video cards, an extra-stout CPU cooler, a new hard drive, a trio of extra case fans, and a system builder's copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, which I'm going to upgrade to Professional later today, which saves me a total of $170 over the retail version!!!
Part 3 will be up as soon as I get the bits put together and running, which will hopefully be by Sunday at the latest. Cheers!
... and nothing happens. Press it again. Nothing happens. Press it a bunch more times...
***POP***
Smoke starts coming out of the computer. It turns out that my old computer was fine, and the video card was the bad part causing it to not start up. Luckily, I had an ancient video card in my office, and I hooked it up, pressed the button...
... and nothing much happened. The power actually came on, but all I got was an error code on the motherboard's LED display. So, not sure what was wrong, I unhooked the RAM and processor, and sent them back to the store. Two weeks later, I got the replacement parts, hooked them up...
... SUCCESS!!! Something actually happened! This is where I found out that when you move a hard drive from one computer to another computer, Windows says NO. Without an operating system, a computer isn't much use, so I downloaded a free Linux operating system so I could get online, and that's what I've been using. Yeah, I spent $800 on computer bits and I'm running it off of a 8GB USB stick. Great fun, right?
Anyhoo, today I picked up a big pile of parts, which should get me close to completing the project. A picture would be nice, so here it is:
That's what I bought today. A pair of hot-shit video cards, an extra-stout CPU cooler, a new hard drive, a trio of extra case fans, and a system builder's copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, which I'm going to upgrade to Professional later today, which saves me a total of $170 over the retail version!!!
Part 3 will be up as soon as I get the bits put together and running, which will hopefully be by Sunday at the latest. Cheers!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
How Joe built a Computer: Part 1
Because my wife thinks it is awesome, Mrs. Chili is confused by it, and Kitten wants pictures... here we go!
I started out with the computer case. I picked one that's big, black with a silver door on the front, and super-groovy, and it looks like this:
The next thing I did was order a motherboard, processor, RAM cards, and a power supply. I salvaged the hard drives from the old computer. The stuff comes in a bunch of fancy boxes, cat optional:
Time to crack open the case and get to work, starting with putting in the power supply, and screwing the hard drives in the cage located on the bottom right-hand side as you're looking at it in the picture:
The next bit was tricky... motherboard stuff, starting with the processor, the heatsink/fan for the processor, and the RAM modules:
This was the point where things got tricky... tune in for Part 2!!!
I started out with the computer case. I picked one that's big, black with a silver door on the front, and super-groovy, and it looks like this:
The next thing I did was order a motherboard, processor, RAM cards, and a power supply. I salvaged the hard drives from the old computer. The stuff comes in a bunch of fancy boxes, cat optional:
Time to crack open the case and get to work, starting with putting in the power supply, and screwing the hard drives in the cage located on the bottom right-hand side as you're looking at it in the picture:
Hah! Blogging from my new computer!!
Hey boys and girls, friends and far-off neighbors... I just built my own computer!!!!!
That project I started over a month ago has finally paid off. It turns out that the memory I was sent the first time was just bad. I got replacement RAM sticks, and now my computer is up and running... on Ubuntu, since Windows Vista recognizes that it is in a new computer and refuses to run under any circumstances. That's fine, I'm going to buy Windows 7 in a couple of weeks. I get a huge discount through school, I think Windows 7 Business will only cost me like $65.
I'm not done with the computer yet. The video card is a dinosaur I bought 5-6 years ago, so that needs replacing. I'm probably going to add some memory as well, and maybe a Blu-ray player. Yippie!
That project I started over a month ago has finally paid off. It turns out that the memory I was sent the first time was just bad. I got replacement RAM sticks, and now my computer is up and running... on Ubuntu, since Windows Vista recognizes that it is in a new computer and refuses to run under any circumstances. That's fine, I'm going to buy Windows 7 in a couple of weeks. I get a huge discount through school, I think Windows 7 Business will only cost me like $65.
I'm not done with the computer yet. The video card is a dinosaur I bought 5-6 years ago, so that needs replacing. I'm probably going to add some memory as well, and maybe a Blu-ray player. Yippie!
Sunday, July 4, 2010
I totally didn't want to do this...
In my last post, I had mentioned that I was building a new computer, and I hoped that my next entry would be from that computer. No such luck.
I discovered that there was nothing wrong with the old computer. The problem was a bad video card, which I discovered when I tried plugging it into the new set-up and it started smoking. Yeah, awesome right? Unfortunately, when you buy computer components they are "exchange only"... you CANNOT get your money back under any circumstances. So I'm going to have to press on with the computer building enterprise.
Luckily? I found an ancient video card in my office, and it still works enough for me to post this, and to know that something else wasn't working right in my new computer build. So, I sent back most of the parts, and I should be getting new ones any day. This time, I'm enlisting the help of one of the professors at the local college, who taught the computer hardware class I took a few years ago. I'm going to get him to help me troubleshoot the whole operation and maybe even use extra parts he has laying around to help figure out how to get it running. I don't mean to keep his parts, but we can use his parts to find out which of my parts isn't working correctly.
This is the sort of situation where I wish I believed in a god...
... so that I would have someone to blame. :)
In other news... Happy Independence Day!!! In a few minutes, I'm going to fire up my new Paul Jr. Coleman grill and cook up some hot dogs. I don't eat hot dogs as a rule, part of the "no pink mystery meat" rule that eliminated hot dogs, bologna, Vienna sausages, and Spam from my diet. However, several of the food-related shows I watch have featured hot dogs prominently over the last few weeks, so I figured I could give it another try.
I used to love those hot dogs you get from steam carts in NYC. I like mine with everything except ketchup. So here's me making some dogs on the grill for me and my wife, and she's happy with the spicy mustard and onions that we always have on hand. Me? I need sauerkraut, relish, mustard, and that special spiced onion sauce that lets you know you're having the real deal. It was a culture shock to move to North Carolina when I was a kid, and find out that they put watery chili, raw onions, and cole slaw on hot dogs. WTF?
Anyways, I'm going to have a good one, and I hope everyone else does too!
I discovered that there was nothing wrong with the old computer. The problem was a bad video card, which I discovered when I tried plugging it into the new set-up and it started smoking. Yeah, awesome right? Unfortunately, when you buy computer components they are "exchange only"... you CANNOT get your money back under any circumstances. So I'm going to have to press on with the computer building enterprise.
Luckily? I found an ancient video card in my office, and it still works enough for me to post this, and to know that something else wasn't working right in my new computer build. So, I sent back most of the parts, and I should be getting new ones any day. This time, I'm enlisting the help of one of the professors at the local college, who taught the computer hardware class I took a few years ago. I'm going to get him to help me troubleshoot the whole operation and maybe even use extra parts he has laying around to help figure out how to get it running. I don't mean to keep his parts, but we can use his parts to find out which of my parts isn't working correctly.
This is the sort of situation where I wish I believed in a god...
... so that I would have someone to blame. :)
In other news... Happy Independence Day!!! In a few minutes, I'm going to fire up my new Paul Jr. Coleman grill and cook up some hot dogs. I don't eat hot dogs as a rule, part of the "no pink mystery meat" rule that eliminated hot dogs, bologna, Vienna sausages, and Spam from my diet. However, several of the food-related shows I watch have featured hot dogs prominently over the last few weeks, so I figured I could give it another try.
I used to love those hot dogs you get from steam carts in NYC. I like mine with everything except ketchup. So here's me making some dogs on the grill for me and my wife, and she's happy with the spicy mustard and onions that we always have on hand. Me? I need sauerkraut, relish, mustard, and that special spiced onion sauce that lets you know you're having the real deal. It was a culture shock to move to North Carolina when I was a kid, and find out that they put watery chili, raw onions, and cole slaw on hot dogs. WTF?
Anyways, I'm going to have a good one, and I hope everyone else does too!
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