A hot, steamy bowl of awesome [s]

I started working on a killa chili recipe hoping to pass quals for the Manbird Invitational. Since I'm an open source kinda guy, I'll bore you with pictures and descriptions later.

While the digital negative converter works its magic, I'll to quickly digress into the topic of playoffs. Wild card weekend was pretty meh, except:

• Hooray for the Pats getting embarrassed.
  
• Also, go Cards. Now, I hate Zonies as much as the next guy, but Warner is practically the same QB as Rich Gannon (well, with a ring) and Fitzgerald/Boldin are just great athletes. That game made watching the others worthwhile.
  

Actually it'd be great if they became the USA Cardinals. If the Patriots can claim New England and the Cowboys are America's Team, why can't a franchise that's resided in so many major cities claim such a constituency? Then I'd have no guilt about cheering for them.

Here's to the improbable Az-Min NFC Championship.



I thieved/rescued Megan's Italian Stone Pine and I bought a Norfolk Island Pine to add some (eventual) vertical greenery to the yard. Likely spots are the middle section of the front yard and next to the barbecue.



35w halogens have replaced the bulbs in the living room. They're much more directional and suck enough current to make the motion sensor happy.





I painted a piece of osb. You know, for whatever.



Since I could turn a deaf ear to most of the handegg, I re-reorganized the in-wall entertainment center. Now it has room for the woofer.

In other news, plywood continues to go up in the master bathroom, I have some monkey board ready for the next step. Since there's much drywall affixing to be done, I bought a corded drill/driver for the added power.



Onto the chili. Since this was my first attempt, my m.o. was to use quality ingredients not being able to rely on a magical synergy of flavors that is developed over many attempts. I readied all my favorite seasonings, with no intention of using them all - but you gotta be ready.



Copious onions and orange peppers, chopped small because the only chunky thing in chili should be steak. And maybe a very softened garlic clove (gotta try this next time), like the ones at hot pot. It was all sauteed in olive oil and butter, per Rob's instructions.



Next was to cook the beef. With lime, of course.



Quality ingredients, yo. I threw in some nice Italian sausage and greek olives.



Once the meat was about done I added various seasonings. Chili powder, ancho, rosemary, peppercorn, basil, tapatio, and Fire Rock pale.



Then simmered with a can of black beans and half a jar of tomato sauce. Also in lieu of brown sugar I added some of the maple syrup SFS's mom mules across the border for me.

It occured to me that so much work/seasoning is put in to overcoming the tomatoey flavor. I wondered if I just needed to simmer the pot for a very long time (crock style) to let the various elements coalesce into the medium. Or maybe my chili platform should be to use as little tomato as possible so that you can taste the beef, sausage, olive, sesame oil, etc.

The liquid part of the chili isn't bland, but it isn't distinct. The WIN comes when you eat a piece of beef, sausage, olive, or combination thereof. The flavors seem to cling to the elements, rather than suspend in the medium. I crumbled some gorgonzola on each heated bowl to effect some tartness, but never followed through with my aspiration to add a nacho cheese layer.

It's a fascinating problem of taste engineering, and I look forward to further study. Next batch will certainly include bacon, chilis, and more sesame oil.



No chili for the pooch.

Time lapse blogography [s]

So the ol' 1.6 Athlon setup finally choked. Hard to say what it was, I've failed to diagnose the problem hardware having independently swapped everything out. I'll revisit when I'm setting the box up as a terminal in the garage.

The new stuff:

• ASUS M3N78 Pro mobo. $100. Supports all the nice things, particularly sli and 1066 ram.
  
• AMD Phenom X3 2.3. $110. Three core, their second tier.
  
• PNY GeForce 9800GT. $160. Listed for a whole lot more. The gig of video memory should help with photo editing.
  

Of course, Fry's gave me the X3 2.1 and I didn't realize it until they'd closed. I had to stop by the following day and recover the 200,000,000 hz they owed me.

The near-term purchases include a sata disk, another two cheap gigs of ram, and maybe a new display.

And, well, I'm borrowing Curt's monitor, the power supply is sitting on the case, and there are boards sprawled about my desk area. But at least everything is functional.

The hiatus is explained, now rewind.



Thanksgiving was good. The new house accommodates well.



I snagged Madden '09 for entertainment purposes. My dad picked it right up and Jon wouldn't be separated from the game, save for by real football. There's not much to say about it - being an EA franchise - except it's generally enjoyable, graphically unimpressive, and Cris Collinsworth follows Madden's act very closely.



Taboo was a riot, particularly the last round where Mom, Connie, and I netted several points from Mark, Jon, and Erik.





The hallway floor went in fine. 'How did you overcome the itis?', you might ask. Well I peered in the fridge and made a glorious connection:

1. Red Bull
2. Orange juice

Iced and stirred together, pure genius. It's like Sunny D with stimulants.



The stairs are the only remaing hardwood to be done. You've come a long way, baby. The constructon tiredom led to my second genius (derived re-)invention: post-Thanksgiving pizza.

1. A fresh pizza from Round Table: the canvas.
   
2. Leftover turkey piled on top.
   
3. Mashed potatoes piled on top.
   

Delightful.

Thanksgiving weekend also saw d'Chris's d'Brickapult claw its way from the grave to a winning record and fourth seed in the Medieval Gridiron playoffs. Similarly, Santos surmounted the impossible and overcame a large point differential to knock James out of contention. It's been a white knuckle end to a unimpressive season.

This weekend I'm up against Potats' team, which is predicted to beat mine by 25 points even after his tight end netted zero on Thursday.

Sunday also featured the long-awaited return to the water. It was pretty good-sized, but rides were characterized by straight drop-bottom turn-close, so not exactly elegant. It's phenomenal how life on land maintains absolutely zero of the muscles required for paddling.

A few quotables:

• Schooled three little college guys. They seemed not happy to lose to a girl.
  
• Go Raiders! ... We're horrible. Marty! Marty! Marty!
• I heard you put Rob and Dave against the glass.
• I am ridiculously addicted to yr blog. Will you please update it more often?

Epilogue:
I'm a firm believer in giving the people what they want, so I'll break you off one more piece of culinary revelation.

1. Sirloin burger with ample Dorchestershire sauce. You probably don't have that, so you can substitute Worchestershire sauce instead.
2. Leftover turkey.
3. Fried onions.
4. Sourdough.