Awakened by The Smell

Today we are having a party for Riley's 1st birthday. We know that a party for is more for us than Riley. Becca decided she wanted a tropical/luau theme a couple of months ago, so she has been looking for deals on decorations and getting some from friends. Our house is now a tropical paradise. But I diverge, more on the party in future posts (with pictures), probably on the family blog.

We decided to keep the "luau" theme and make pulled pork (among other things, like kabobs). The recipe called for cooking it in the slow cooker (crock pot) for 16-18 hours with some liquid smoke and sea salt. So, about 10 pm last night, I put the pork in to cook on low.

Let me back up here a little bit. Sometimes Riley soils her diaper during a nap (no, really?) and you walk into her room and know it. So last night, both Becca and I had pretty much the same experience, although Becca's was more extreme. I woke up in the middle of the night from a smell and said to myself, "man! Riley did it this time. I can smell it from here. Oh well, I'll change her in the morning."

Becca woke up sometime in the middle of the night from the smell and thought (she told me), "did Scot crap his pants?" I busted up laughing when I heard this and have been chuckling all day thinking about it. She got out of bed and opened the door and the smell was stronger and she thought, "Oh! It was Bernie. Where did he do it?" She walked downstairs and looked in the slow cooker at the pork. I'm not sure what purpose that served, but she realized that the smell was coming from pork, not poo.

Now, when we both got up, we both looked at each other and shared our similar experiences and wondered, "um, this is kind of the main dish at our party - is it cooking or rotting?" Well, I checked on it and it is cooking and it smells like any pork shoulder, roast, etc. (So anyone coming, don't worry!). So we are airing out the house so that people don't get the first impression of "good grief, don't you change your child's diaper?" Anyway, we once again affirm that the pork is fine. We just aren't used to waking up in the middle of the night because of something we smell.

P.S. I decided to post this after the party for obvious reasons. The pork was a big hit and we almost finished off the 12 pounds we made (we also had grilled chicken, shrimp, and vegetable kabobs and other sides that people brought). The pork recipe, although simple, was actually really, really good I thought.

Food Friday

This week was pretty busy for us, so there weren’t any spectacular dishes. We had some pork chops with a peach glaze, but Becca and I both agreed that it’s so hard to get pork chops moist (pork loin works a little better) and the combination of mustard with the peaches gave our tongues a little bit of a weird feeling. Becca made a nice Cannelloni that was good but I didn’t get pictures. If you are interested, I think that it was a Rachel Ray recipe so you could find it online. I don’t think that Wendy’s or conference food really qualify either. Actually, I had a Wendy’s double cheeseburger to continue my review of fast food chain $1 double cheeseburgers. It was two patties with one slice of cheese, ketchup, and mayo. Definitely sub-par compared to McDonalds. I still have Burger King to go. Anyway, I thought I would diverge from dishes or recipes and just talk about a general food topic today.

Think of a food that you like. Now close your eyes and take a deep breath through your nose. Can’t you almost taste it? They say that we remember smells better than any other sense. There are just some smells that bring back memories, make our mouths water, or just are nice to smell over and over. I submit some of my favorite smells.

Garlic. I love garlic. I guess the career path of Vampire wouldn’t work out for me. Darn. We have a garlic press but never use it. I like to smash the garlic with the side of a knife and mince it or slice it to infuse flavors into various dishes. The thing I like is that some gets on my fingers (oils in the garlic?) and stay for at least a couple of hours, if not a day or two. Maybe it’s weird, but it’s nice to smell that garlicky finger just to get a whiff of the garlic.

Claude’s Brisket Sauce. If any of you have had my brisket, you might remember the smell. It’s an old family recipe, but here it is in the public domain (TIC) … ready? Brisket, Claude’s Brisket Sauce, cook slowly in the crock pot or oven and then shred or slice and let it cook in the juices for another 30 minutes. The best is when you set it to go and then leave (for church or for the day) and come home and the whole house smells like it. Divine. I once told Becca that for my birthday she should just dab a little Claude’s Brisket Sauce on instead of perfume and I would be perfectly happy..

Pumpkin Bread. I once read that the scent of pumpkin gets your man in the mood more than any other scent (hey, I grew up with 4 sisters and there was always some chick magazine laying around). I don’t love pumpkin pie, but pumpkin bread is pretty good.

Fresh bread. Oh man, think of a hot loaf of bread coming out of the oven and breaking it open and the steam rises as you smell the cooked flour and yeast. There’s not much better.

I could go on, but I’m a little hungry now and I don’t think that a granola bar is going to cut it. Time to find a brisket sandwich on fresh garlic bread and a slice of pumpkin bread for dessert. Ok, that doesn’t sound as good put all together.

Food Friday

Malibu Chicken Wraps
Just add breaded chicken (cooked how the packaging directs), swiss cheese, tomato, avacado, lettuce, honey mustard, and ranch on a tortilla of your choice.

Sweet Potato Fries
Cut into fry sized pieces, coat with olive oil, a little cinnamon and brown sugar and bake 10-20 minutes (softer to crispier) at 425 degrees.

A Discussion About Underarms

One thing I hate. Ok, maybe not hate, but something that doesn’t set your day on the right path. This thing is when you go to put deodorant on and it breaks. You realize that you were almost out but could maybe, if the planets align and there’s a full moon, get a day or two more. You realize that you don’t have any in standby except for a small one buried somewhere in your 72-hour kit and were just going to buy some tomorrow. You realize that you have to gather up the largest broken pieces and rub them on your armpits, also giving you hands that definitely will not sweat in a couple of days (jk, I wash my hands).

I don’t know about you, but once I find a deodorant I like, I stick with it. Some say that you should rotate deodorants and shampoos so it will have a better effect (like your body builds immunity to it?). I think that’s why they don’t give out many free samples of some guy products, like deodorant, shaving cream, etc. When it comes to hygiene products, I think most guys have a go to product and are fine with keeping the status quo. I’ve tried spray-on (pain), gel (does something weird to my shirt armpits), and finally settled on “invisible solid” – whatever that means. Deodorant also has to be antiperspirant for me. Otherwise, if I just wanted to smell nice, I would douse myself in perfume like the French in 1700. Ok, I’m now bored of rambling about deodorant.

Weird accomplishment

I accomplished a great feat. When we went to Venice Beach to walk around, I drove to the end of I-10. I have also been to the other end (in Jacksonville). I haven't been on the complete road, but the only parts that are missing are El Paso to San Antonio and Houston to Lafayette. I have also been on almost all of I-40 (some sections many times), only missing the Flagstaff to Barstow section. Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool to have seen both ends to an interstate. Has anyone else accomplished other significantly insignificat feats.

In-N-Out

Today I had my first In-N-Out burger. Where have you been all my life? Oh yeah, in California. I've heard some people swear by them and some people that hate them (to those people, I bite my thumb at you). I wouldn't go as far to say it was the best burger I have ever had, but it is way up there. Actually, I had two. I got a double-double animal style and was still hungry (we ate a smaller lunch at Six Flags and didn't eat dinner until 8) so I got another cheeseburger and wolfed that down to (with a strawberry milkshake to top it off).

On another note related to my last Food Friday, you may have noticed that I had a pastrami dog and then a pastrami sandwich. What can I say? "Pastrami is the most sensual of all the cured meats" (George Castanza). I do like pastrami. It was more of a coincidence that I had it twice in three days, but it is what it is and it was spectacular.

Food Friday

I didn't want to disappoint by using a vacation as an excuse for not posting Food Friday. When we went to Hollywood, I wanted to go to a place I heard about on the Food Network. The place is called Pink's. The hot dog stand has been around since 1939, so it had to be good. I don't think that we were disappointed. They had traditional and not so traditional dogs. Some were named after various celebrities (my mother-in-law got the "rosie"). The wait in line was pretty long, but once you placed your order, it was pretty quick to get out. I got the Brooklyn Pastrami Swiss Cheese Dog. Becca got the Chili Cheese Dog.

After the temple of Friday, Cory directed us to Diddy Riese - an ice cream place where you can get an ice cream sandwich with two fresh cookies for $1.50! I had a chocolate chip and chocolate with white chocolate chip cookies with strawberry ice cream. Becca had chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and mint chocolate chip ice cream. They were so good. I got a tip for another long-time LA establishment - Canter's (est. 1931). I got the Pastrami and Rye (with mustard, of course). Becca got Matzo ball soup. I highly recommend the sandwich (also the Rueben, which my mother-in-law got).

Job Interview

This has not happened to me, but I've heard that sometimes when people interview for jobs (oh yeah, that's my problem, I haven't really interviewed for a job), they get weird questions like, "if you were an animal, what would it be and why?" Ok, maybe this just happens in weird speed dating or something like that, but hey, I wanted to make this post a little more interesting than saying, "here's some pictures of some animals at the zoo".

The question is, which animal are you most like? I think that I try to be like the chimpanzee, thinking and trying to look smart, but end up being like the meerkat, sitting on my recliner doing nothing (just kidding).

Photos

While I was at the Getty Center, I was playing around with my camera and got these shots. Still practicing. Click on any picture to see a bigger version. I love how they have bird of paradises planted all over here (1st picture). Make sure to look at all the ladybugs on the plant in the 4th picture.

I tried to frame myself taking a picture with some mirrors. Some were broken or wouldn't cooperate, but I think it turned out pretty cool, at least conceptually. The other picture was taken through this prism like lense (at the musuem) with Becca on the other side.

Hey, Coach

I have coached the young men's basketball team the past two years. We are the Junior Fighting Walnuts (the name of our ward is Walnut Creek and when I played with the men, we called ourselves the Fighting Walnuts). I enjoy coaching even though I just wing it. These are usually the things I say (and not much more besides making sure everyone gets playing time):

• Move your feet!
• Box out!
• Slow down/Take your time! Your fancy dribbling may look pretty sometimes, but the turnovers don't.
• If we don't shoot the ball, we don't score points and we can't get ahead without points.
• Don't reach!
• Call out who you have on defense!
• Make good passes!
• Spread out!
• Move! Help him!

Most of the time, I could just say any of these and it would apply. I guess street ball on TV has made people want to look pretty rather than have some fundamental skills. Maybe I'm old school, but sometimes when we practice, I make them pass it 3 times before they can shoot (like Hoosiers). It doesn't really matter though, most of our points come off a steal and fast break and they seem to have fun and they got better during the year.

We had a good turnout (11 played) and a good year. Last year, we only won 1 game. This year, we had a little more success. Each of the young men got better since last year and we had a move in or two. We got to the semifinals of the stake tournament and were only down 20-26 to the defending champions before they went on a 15-0 run. We responded with a 11-4 run, but it was too little too late.

• Regular Season (W-L: 3-1)
• L 18-19 Jan 12 vs. Wells Branch
• W 31-14 Jan 26 vs. Pflugerville
• W 31-17 Feb 8 vs. Shoal Creek/Marble Falls
• W 23-11 Feb 16 vs. Lake Austin
• Tournament (W-L: 1-1)
• W 42-19 Mar 7 vs. (5) Anderson Mill
• L 31-45 Mar 8 vs. (1) Cedar Park (semis)

#3 Casimir Bissereth, #4 Fally Joseph, #12 Jon Dover, #20 (blue) Ben Loveday-Calhoun, #20 (white) Levi DeCrescenzo, #21 Jeremy Calhoun, #23 Michael Calhoun, #40 Jarom DeCrescenzo, #44 Michael Kelm, #50 Jon Kelly (#12, #20, #21, #23, and #50 are all cousins; #3 and #4 are cousins; #20 (white) and #40 are brothers). Not pictured: Josh Rasco.

Last year's team (2007 W-L: 1-6)

L-R: I forget his name (friend of one of the boys), Levi DeCrescenzo, Casimir Bissereth, Michael Calhoun, Me, Jon Dover, Jarom DeCrescenzo, Michael Kelm Not pictured: Josh Dover, Jeremy Calhoun.

Prank

This is just too funny not to share. It was posted on utefans.net and involved a prank on another prankster. Most of them are Utah alumni.

Food Friday

I found this recipe in the Austin American-Statesman. I think that this is the first time that I've been excited to make anything that is vegetarian. Ok, my enchiladas are vegetarian and the beans and rice are as well if you leave out the bacon, but you get the idea. The falafel(s?) turned out really well and tasted really good. We ended up using three on a pita because they grew a little bit while cooking (because of the flour and baking soda?).

We don't have a food processor, so it made the blending a little more difficult. We have a magic bullet, a bosh mixer with a blender attachement, and a mini-chopper (you can chop about the equivalent of an onion in it). The magic bullet and blender didn't really work because the mixture was too dry to get it to rotate, so I had to use the mini-chopper a few times and add the baking powder and flour by hand.

Falafel

1 cup dried chickpeas (I used 1 can of garbanzo beans)
1/2 large onion, roughly chopped
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley
2 Tbsp. fresh cilantro
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. hot red pepper
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. baking powder
4-6 Tbsp. flour

Soak chickpeas overnight in enough water to cover them (skip if using canned). Drain (fresh or canned). Put first 8 ingredients (down to cumin) in a food processor and blend (but not pureed). Mix in baking powder and flour. Enough flour needs to be added so that the dough forms a ball and isn't sticky on your hands. I found that with the canned chickpeas, I needed 6+ Tbsp. of flour (I think the can is a little more than the amount called for). Turn into bowl and cool in fridge for a few hours (so that the flavors blend). Make balls about the size of walnuts or use a cookie scooper (it was great!) and cook in 375 degree oil for a couple of minutes until dark brown. Squish on pita and add lettuce, tomato, onions, cucumber sauce (6 oz. plain yogurt, 1/2 cucumber finely chopped, 1 Tbsp. dill weed, 1 Tbsp. mayonaisse), or tahini sauce. I made 10 falafel balls. I think that you can change flavors by replacing the cilatro and parsley with other things like roasted red peppers and other spices/vegetables. Good luck and Καλή όρεξη! בתיאבון & بالهناء والشفاء (bon appetit in greek, arabic, and hebrew).

Formatting Rant

Why is it so hard to format things? When I wrote my Master's thesis, it seemed like I fought with Bill everyday, trying to get Word to do this or that. I didn't want to learn LaTex so I could avoid Word, but sometimes I wonder why a PC is even worth it sometimes rather than a Mac, which everyone says works right the first time and is sooooo great (I'm a little skeptical that there aren't a whole set of other problems and you still have to deal with Bill if you use Office for Mac [and the rest of the world, especially in engineering, who use PCs]).

Why is it that Blogger (I recognize that Blogger is associated with Google and not Bill) can't keep the format that you tell it to have? I mean, when I import a picture, do I really need an extra enter between every paragraph? And when I import 10 pictures, do I really need 10 extra lines? I didn't tell you to do that, so cut it out. Sometimes when you delete some of the extra enters, it decides that a picture was linked to that one and the picture goes bye-bye. Then you have to import the picture again and you're back to square one of reformatting.

Don't get me started on what happends if you import a picture with the left or right setting. I usually use the none settting, but then you can't text wrap. Sometimes, depending on how you import the picture, the spacing between lines is different, so you have one paragraph with like -0.5 spacing and the next paragraph at 1.5 spacing. Wow, that looks great! Next year I get to go to 3rd grade.

After you think you have everything right, you publish the post and it changes everything again. It doesn't look like it did when you composed it. It doesn't look like the preview, so you have to go through this editing iteration. Sometimes the changes will take but sometimes if you are lucky, it will obviously be smarter than you and change it to how it wants. Well, I changed it so that it didn't look like crap! Just keep it how I made it look!

Now, I know some will say, "hey, it's free, so back off" or "why don't you use wordpress" or "you could write your own code so you can have a sparkly turtle background". I took a computer science class back in 1998 when I was a freshman and can get by enough to mess with already written html code, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I can change the background picture to my own and change the width of the text boxes, but that's about it (and it takes a while to get it right).

My rant is - why can't things just work how I want them to. Why can't computers just read our minds already? Sometimes I just want to ctrl-f someone in charge and ctrl-x or ctrl-alt-delete them, or at least edit them. Darn it, all I got was the task manager! Reboot! Reboot!

CROP Walk

Today was the Austin CROP walk. For youth conference, the different wards had a competition to see how much they could raise. The youth in our ward won, raising $1125 (they won by quite a margin and so they collected their prize - being 1st in the food line at the conference). Great job! The ward encouraged everyone to wear orange (not too hard living in Austin because of UT) and there was a ward breakfast and a photo contest. The three categories were: 1) The number of ward members photographed at the CROP walk, 2) Best nature photo, and 3) Best overall/general photo. I photographed 68. Below are some of my submissions for the other categories (not all of them - the ones with Riley are just in because, well, she's my daughter).

Riley was ready to go and the bees were out (look for it in flowers). By the end, Riley was pooped and fell asleep.