It’s been a long while since I’ve participated in a Thursday Thirteen, but with Thanksgiving just a week and a day away I thought it would be a good time to list a few things that I am personally thankful for this year.  I’ll not bore you with the details of the ups-and-downs we’ve faced, everyone has lows, and nobody wants to listen to someone elses’ problems.  I’d rather focus on the things that keep me smiling, motivated and happy that I’ve lived long enough to see them.

So these, my dear friends, readers and even you, casual passerby, are the things that I am thankful for this year. Some are big things, some are small, but each of them is dear to me and my family.

Thirteen Things I’m Thankful for This Holiday Season
(In no particular order)

1. My health, and the health of my family: Of course that might go without saying, but every day that we’re all here to enjoy each other is a day I’m thankful for.
2. My Wife and her support: She has stood by me for two years while I made little or nothing and worked on growing my business.  She never wavered, even when I did.  She put her second career on hold when necessary to bolster me, and she’s the love of my life.
3. My Dad: We’ve been through rocky straights over the past 15 years or so, but the rift seems to have been mended.
4. My Grandparents: Grandma has been feeling under the weather this year, but at 85 years young, she’s still kickin’, and Grandpa is still as imposing as ever at 89.
5. The Medical professionals of the U.S. Armed Forces: Who are doing a wonderful job helping my son and our family deal with his learning delays and autism.
6. Miss Sandra and Miss Carol: My son’s speech and vocational therapists, who visit him weekly and whom he loves dearly.
7. My Sister: Who has once again joined the forces of the working, and in doing so has found a bit of herself that she was lacking. Not that she wasn’t doing well, I’m just glad she’s happier.
8. Good Friends, both online and off: There are not many people that I call a close friend.  But of the ones I do, they are my friend for life, and I’m here for them, as they have been for me.
9. The men and women of the United States Armed Forces: Be they reservist, guard or active duty. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine or Coast Guard, I salute you one and all. You go through difficult times so that the rest of us can do our thing.  I’ve been there.  If you need me, just call. I’ve got your back.
10. My Dogs: It may sound a bit redneck, but they’re just as much a  part of my family as anyone else, even when they are being totally annoying. (And they got a place on this list by being totally annoying)
11. My readers, visitors and guests: Without you I would have nothing to write or worse, would be writing in a vacuum.  You validate the work that I do in a small way every time you drop in and as a whole, make it possible for me to continue doing what I hope is a good job.  I thank each and every one of you.
12. My children: All of them, wherever they may be.  One is grown with children of her own.  Others are nearly grown, or in different states and time zones.  One I have never spoken to and the one who lives with me cannot speak.  All of you are are a part of my thoughts every single day, whether you believe it or not.
13. Laughter: Both the fact that I’m able to laugh, and the laughter of others.  it truly is the most powerful medicine known to man.  Don’t believe me?  Try having a bad day when a two year old is giggling.  See if you can.  I doubt it.

And there you have it, though I’m sure this list is not inclusive, or even close to it.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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For those of you who have missed the claws coming out on Thursdays, you’re in luck. Today I’m directing a bit of snarkasm on FN’s Bobblehead Extraordinaire. I’ve just been nice for too long, it seems.

Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war!

Ah Giada. To some she’s the Food Network’s beauty queen.  Others think she is a time traveling chef from the distant future. (You can’t make up stuff like this!) Neither matters to me.  Whether she’s just a beauty queen or a future chef who is not familiar with our language, she should not be writing recipes.

Why? You ask.  Because if you follow her recipes, you will accomplish one of the following feats.  You will:

1. Make something terrible
2. Cause damage to appliances or cutlery
3. Do yourself bodily harm
4. Feel stupid following this recipe

Granted, common sense may save you from one of the above scenarios, but let’s face facts.  Giada is a celebrity chef.  Some people are going to assume that they need to follow “her” instructions to the leter.  The results could be devastating.

I’ll be honest.  Everyone who writes recipes makes mistakes.  I’ve done it. I’ve been called on it. I correct it. But in the case of any food network celebrity, there should be proof readers, ya know? In a network that employs its very own food librarian and is owned by one of the largest media powerhouses in the country, you would think someone would check to see if something … foolish … managed to slip past the chef, or her writers, or the web guys, or something.  But they’re not, and Miss de Laurentiis is the worst case that they have.

So here we go.  I’ll list the recipe snippets, then tell you why one of the above bad things might happen.  FAir enough?  OK, let’s move on.

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With my wedding anniversary coming up this Friday, there really was only one logical choice for this week’s Thursday Thirteen, The lovely and incredibly talented Mrs. seat of her Pants, a person whom I could not be more proud of or in love with.

Truthfully, thirteen things does not begin to cover everything I could say about my wife, there’s a lot more to her than that.  She is exceptional at being so many different things; a wife, a mother, my best friend, an instructor and mentor for Department of Defense students, an author and editor, and more. She gives 120% of herself to each and every one of these things, sometimes to more than one of them at the same time.  Unfortunately, the nature of the Thursday Thirteen is that I only have room for thirteen things.

And for those of you who aren’t fans of washed out Nagel-esque photos, here’s another shot of the reason I wake up every morning wishing I could just lie there all day.

Please note that these are not in any order whatsoever:

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Everyone has their go-to ingredients.  These are the things that you grab when you’re cooking that you may not even realize you use almost every day.  At least until you run out of them, at which point you find that you’re staring blankly at the spice cabinet and the food that’s begun to burn in your skillet without the faintest idea what to do next.

I ran into this problem last week when I realized I was out of black peppercorns. (or thought I was…  They had fallen over behind a huge container of chili powder and I didn’t see them.) It took me a full five minutes to realize that I actually do have preground pepper in the pantry and it’s fresh, because I never-ever use it.

So here we go. These are some of the things that I would be lost without in my pantry or my refrigerator.

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Some weeks just don’t go like you expected.  All the planning in the world simply can’t make up for the things that didn’t go the way they should have, and I suppose that’s the real reason for this TT.  No matter how hard I tried, something always got in the way of researching what I actually wanted to do this list about.

So instead of that list, which I will endeavor to complete by the Next Thursday Thirteen, I give you

Thirteen reasons I don’t have a better Thirteen:

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Techno-babble.  We’ve heard it used when referring to Star Trek and Star Wars, but did you know that every industry has its own form of techno-speak?  Most often these are words that are used among just people in the industry and we understand them just fine.  It’s when they’re used among “civilians” or the “uninitiated” that we either sound like geniuses or complete idiots.

As a professional web developer for over 16 years, I have acquired a large collection of terms and phrases that most people in their right minds have absolutely no desire to understand.  The following list contains some of those terms. (And alterneately, the terms I use to describe the issue to the client when necessary.)

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There are things that each of us does on a daily basis.  Some of them are for our personal amusement, some are for health reasons and some are things we’d really rather not be doing, but end up doing anyway.

For me each day is usually a combination of all three of these things.  As a Work At Home Dad, it sometimes means that the workday either lasts well into the morning hours, or that no work gets done at all because, and let’s face it, a toddler doesn’t really give a rat’s behind what Dad has contracted out today.  He’s interested in his life, not mine.  And then there’s always the other little things…

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I thought I’d take a break from my usual adoration/bashing of all things TV Chef related and simply dish up a list of helpful tips for your day-to-day kitchen life. These tips are in no particular order or by any degree of usefulness, I just grabbed thirteen that I thought would be helpful.

If you like the idea, I’ll add a once per week kitchen tip to the regular lineup here, so let me know!

Now on with the tips! Read more…

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(I’m combining this post with my weekly Thursday Thirteen, if you were just here to see the TT, scroll to the bottom of the post.)

As foodies we are sometimes driven to try the most recent trend in foods. To go after more exotic ingredients and preparation methods. To push our cooking skills and palate’s further than they have ever gone before. All of these are good things and make for a very interesting culinary life. Food should never be boring, after all.

While I subscribe to the concepts mentioned above, there are still times I when just want a really good French Fry, and yesterday was one of those days.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t liked fast food french fries in a very long time. Most are nothing more than overcooked, greasy little processed things that don’t do anything at all for me, other than perhaps cause a case of indigestion later. On the other hand, I rarely turn down the opportunity to indulge in a homemade fry, whether I’m the one making it or not, making fries one of the things I almost never order in a restaurant. I’ll take mine my way, thank you.

I prefer to make fries in a cast iron skillet rather than in a deep pan or heavy dutch oven for several reasons. One, the oil heats much more quickly in a heavy shallow pan. Two, it cools more quickly when the heat is lowered because of greater surface/air ratios. Three, It’s a lot harder to crowd the pan, which allows me to see each and every item that I’m frying while keeping my temperatures constant. Taking out the guess work is a good thing, as it means that you won’t end up with greasy food.

(Read the bottom of the post to see the thirteen things I will almost never order out)

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