AND lo, unto the hellscape of Bakersfield there was delivered a couple. AND that couple didst live in squalor amongst roaches, big-ass bugs, and team players. THE men and women of the hovel did not yet know their betters were upon them…
And so on and so forth. Hey everyone, it’s nice to be back. I was in Racine on Sunday for a trio of birthdays: my niece, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, and my grandmother. We had a gay old time eating delicious risotto and marinaded beef tenderloin. Then we had a Speed Party: eat cake, pinata crash, open presents in 30 or less minutes. Spacebee and I rode dirty down to Racine, spent about 3 hours there, and then headed back up. Our driving time equaled the time we were there, but it was worth it to see so many family members’ birthdays in one shot!
There’s also crazy news on the Racine front: my parents are moving to… Door County. My father accepted a position as the president and CEO of the visitor’s bureau up yonder, and so by the end of the year they will have (hopefully, in this housing market) sold their house and moved up there. My brosef and seestor are moving out soon or have moved out already, and so they won’t be going with. I know I’m still digesting the news… but I am looking forward to going up there to visit.
Now, as anyone in Madison can attest to, I’ve been going buck fucking crazy on a cookbook I received from my dad recently.
[Backstory] As some of you may know, my dad used to work for Visit Milwaukee, the convention and visitor’s bureau for the area. As the VP of Sales, it was his job to sell the city to various large conventions so they would come and buy up a bunch of hotel rooms and spend tourist money like ‘whoa.’ So they have these conventions where people representing large conventions come and get wined and dined and look at booths by various cities in order to hold their convention there. My dad worked hard to set up a dinner for under a hundred people at the home of Art Smith, Oprah’s personal chef. So a bunch of people went to his house in Chicago and had some great food and (I hear) raved about it to others at the convention the next day. As the guests left, Art Smith signed copies of his newest cookbook for the them, and my dad snagged a copy for me as well. [/Backstory]
Now, I had paged through the cookbook and found a few good recipes, but I hadn’t actually taken a step to cook anything until last week. I went to Whole Foods and bought all the ingredients to make 4 dinners from the book on consecutive nights. Many of them involved brining and long-lead prep work, so I set up a schedule where I would be cooking one night’s dinner while prepping for the next night’s dinner. Long story short: these things went four-for-four. Each one was goddamned tasty (which can be attested to by those on whazzmaster who tried them, I believe).
All this to mention that the fourth night of Back to the Family-inspired dinners happened to fall on Saturday: college football during the day, Badger football at night, free UFC ‘pay-per-view’ (I’ll let wwhazz expound on that one), and Brewers and Cubs baseball. Mississippi Chicken and Rice with homemade cornbread turned out to be the perfect compliment to 6+ hours of various sports. By the way, GMX, the cornbread we made was straight outta Good Ol’ J.R.’s Country Homemade Cookbook you got me. So now I have two signed cookbooks: one from Oprah’s personal chef, and one from the WWE’s lead announcer. The cornbread was made in a cast-iron skillet, which got ultra-high marks from me. Anything made in a cast-iron pan is going to taste twenty to thirty times better.
Finally, Wisconsin sports are looking good, if shaky. Badgers are 2-0. Packers are 1-0. Brewers are back atop the division (for the moment). And wwhazz is winning Peterstiffly’s Whazzmaster NFL Pool. Incredibly.
HOLLLARIT Bakersfield.
