Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Springtime is Food Blogging Time

Just thought I'd let you all know that last night I put together a meatloaf.

I took about 2 pounds of ground beef, and hand-mushed in 1/2 cup of shredded asiago, a good splash of Worcestershire sauce, salt and coarse ground black pepper (not a lot of salt, there's plenty other salty going on here), and one egg. Mush, mush, check to make sure that the shredded cheese is distributed throughout, wash my hands, because, ew, and done.

I then took this mixture and placed it on to some plastic wrap laid out on my counter. I flattened the mixture into a reasonable rectangle, nothing too precise, and then I laid down pieces of prosciutto on top of it. It took 4 slices to cover.

Next, using the method I call "the jelly roll method", and maybe other people do, too, I pushed the meat up a bit with the plastic wrap to start rolling it up, moved the plastic wrap out of the way, and continued until I had a nice meat roll. I then sealed this up in the plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. Not because it needs to chill before cooking, but because it was after 9 by that point, and I was tired.

Tonight this meaty delight shall be placed into a loaf pan and cooked in a 350 oven for an hour or so. About halfway through the hour, I'll pour a little tomato sauce over the top, just enough to cover it. I'm partial to sauces that are heavy on the basil.

This recipe varies from the original that I got from a Food Network show. That one had parmesan, and not asiago, and it also included chopped red pepper. I didn't have those things in the house. I'm also thinking that the original didn't have Worcestershire in it, but what the heck, it was next to the pepper in the cabinet.

I am going to have great lunches for a few days.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Tami Underwear Conundrum

Tami just posted today about one of the pressing issues of what is, frankly, wrong with women. And I'm sure you'll all agree. It all comes down to the underwear. Women seem to be fixated on whether or not their underwear "matches" or not. Speaking as a guy (and yes, whether you believe it or not, I am) I can tell you that in a half century of living, I have never needed to worry about whether or not my "foundation matches" on any given day.

Why? Simple. Most of the time I only wear one piece of underwear, so there is no question of matching. During the winter, if I put on a suit, I will wear an undershirt in addition to my "tighty whities" They are both white. They match. I can put them on without thinking and move on to allowing my wife to decide if my shirt matches my pants and if the tie goes with the rest of the ensemble.

Why does this matter? It's obvious. This is why you women earn, on average, less money than men for the same work performed in the same period to time as men. It's why women only account for less than 5% of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. It's why so few of you are represented in Congress and why Hillary isn't the president today.

You spend too much time worrying about your damned underwear. If you would just stop wearing bras, you could slap on any old damned pair of panties each morning and there would be no questions asked. Men INVENTED THE BRA, ladies! Hello? It was a plot to keep you occupied so you wouldn't take over the world. It's worked perfectly and we still have that glass ceiling pinned firmly over your heads. Same thing with high heels! How in the hell did we EVER talk you into wearing those?

SUCKERS! As long as you keep falling for this crap, men will keep on running the world. Wake up, women!

Thursday Tami Update

I don't actually have a topic in mind, but I've been posting every Thursday, so I figured I'd just go stream of consciousness or something.

This morning someone said that I looked nice. My reply was, "Thanks. I'm wearing matching underwear today. Once you've got a good foundation, everything else just falls in to place".

I said that, even though I know it's not at all true. Your outer layers can crash horribly down about your head, even with a good foundation. Without one, though, you don't stand a chance.

Let's see, what else... Oh. Right. I don't care at all about Basketball.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Why Newspapers are Sucking Air

You don't have to look very far to see that newspapers in the United States are failing. Today is the last day that the Seattle Post Intelligencer will publish a hard copy, paper edition. Other papers are failing or restructuring their corporate model to stay in business. The day may well come when giants such as the N.Y. Times (already dodging bankruptcy) and the Washington Post may go under. Some of my friends, primarily on the Right wing, feel that this may actually be a good thing. The main stream media is too liberal, they cry! People recognize the bias and they are mad as hell and they won't take it anymore!

An exciting line of thought, but sadly it is pure horsehockey. Newspapers are indeed swirling near the bottom of the toilet, but it's hardly anything to do with partisan political opinions or journalistic slant. The answer, as usual, will be found by following the money. Newspapers put all of their content on line and they never figured out a way to monetize that channel. Advertisers don't want to pay big bucks for online banner ads because they don't generate any sales for the advertiser. It's really as simple as that.

If you're old enough to remember some of those classic black and white movies, you've seen the newsboy out on the street shouting, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" Do you know what "extra" means in that context? Newspapers, once upon a time, put out one edition per day in the morning or the evening. If there was a really BIG story breaking, they would actually put out an extra edition and send kids out on the street to sell it. This, of course, doubled their overhead costs for the day and cut into profits massively.

In the modern era, nobody else has to do that. The 24 hour television news beast can update their broadcast schedule on a moment's notice. Web sites change as fast as you can refresh them. The newspaper is running out of ways to make money at the same time that its news delivery capability is looking like three toed sloth in a world of velociraptors. It simply isn't profitable to compete with the beast.

So what can papers do? They can go back to a local model that subscribers will actually pay for and deliver things that you still can't get on the web or from the big national outlets. You deliver coupons for shoppers. You deliver the local sports news for high school teams that parents still want to save and show off. You deliver obituaries! Families will still want them for their scrap books and memories of family members since departed. This is the market you hit and your readers will pay the fifty cents to buy it and advertisers will spend their money to support it.

Print media isn't dead, but it MUST evolve for a new, more compact generation. Otherwise, it goes the way of the dinosaur. Adapt or die. It's the same for every other business life form on the planet.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Substance Abuse, of a Sorts

OK, Twitter turns out to be really fun. Who knew? I can't tweet from work, but I can put up little things with my phone when I get a minute here or there.

This morning, I left my phone in the car. I work in a big office building, and going out to the car is actually more trouble than it's worth. This means that I will not be checking Facebook or Twitter at all during the day, and the concept makes me a little twitchy.

Time to make myself not use it for a day or two, huh? Addicted to social networking like I'm addicted to caffeine. So sad.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

21st Century Gal

OK, I've signed up for Twitter. At first, it was just to stalk Steven Page, you know, like you do, but then I found out that I could follow w00t and The Onion, as well. Awesome.

Now it's actually useful. Who would have guessed that?