Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Fun

  • Fur Friday

    I know most of you want me to get back to nothing but (NSFW) sexy otters for Fur Fridays, but beloved commenter Pope Jimbo sent in a story that I just couldn’t pass up: Unsuspecting Woman Brings Therapy Dog to Local Furry Convention.

    Before last weekend, Cheryl Wassus had no idea what a “furry” was. So naturally, when the Motor City Furry Convention chose Pets for Vets (a nonprofit that pairs dogs with military veterans) as its charity of choice, she assumed that she and Link, her one-year-old Bernese mountain dog, would be spending the day at an animal event. She wasn’t wrong, necessarily — it’s just that the animals were maybe slightly more anthropomorphized than she had envisioned.

    Seriously though click through and read the whole interview, it’s charming as all get out. Also the Dog’s name is “Link” and there’s a Legend of Zelda shield in there.

  • How to Get Laid Every Sunday Morning

    By But I like cocktails and lurking

    Sauces and stocks are the foundation of good cooking. For any quality construction a good, solid foundation is necessary. In French cooking there are five basic sauces and from those countless other sauces are made. They are called Mother Sauces. One of those is unique in that it is a stand-alone sauce. I am talking about Hollandaise sauce. It is considered the most difficult sauce to master, by far. It requires lots of practice, a double boiler, time, careful timing, and lots of attention.

    Except it doesn’t.

    You can easily whip up a perfect Hollandaise in under ten minutes with almost no equipment. Five if you are practiced.

    Place one half of a stick of salted butter (4 tablespoons) in a 2-cup glass measuring cup. Put in the microwave and heat on high for 15 seconds. You should be able to see some of the butter has melted, usually leaving a hole in the base of the stick. If some of the butter is still cool place back in the microwave on high for five seconds. Continue doing this at 5 second intervals until the butter is about half melted and half soft-solid. Swish it around and mash it up a bit with a small whisk. If the bottom of the glass measuring cup feels warm – around body temperature or just above – you did it right. If it feels hot, even slightly, you have heated too much, in which case you can let it cool.

    Place two raw egg yolks, one tablespoon of lemon juice, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a pinch of allspice in with the butter. Whisk vigorously. After a few minutes the mixture should start to look a bit lumpy. Don’t worry. Ordinarily this would mean you have ‘broken’ the sauce, which means your butter was too hot and has cooked the egg yolk. If you heated the butter to body temp or just above, the mixture will look this way but will not be broken. Keep whisking. After a minute or two it will suddenly go from slightly lumpy to creamy smooth. It should cling generously to your whisk when you lift it.

    Congratulations – you have made a perfect Hollandaise in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. It should have a very tangy, buttery, delightful taste. This will be enough sauce for four eggs. I start my eggs in a skillet, make the hollandaise and set it aside, and then start microwaving the bacon. I put the English muffins in the toaster, and go back to flip the eggs. It should all be ready about the same time with the sauce waiting – 15 minutes start to finish.

    For a Sunday morning breakfast, spoon the hollandaise generously onto a toasted half of an English muffin. Place one fried (or poached) egg on top of that. Salt and pepper the egg. Serve with bacon or sausage and orange juice. You have whipped up a fancy Eggs Benedict breakfast for your significant other. I promise they will appreciate it.

    *Hollandaise is an excellent sauce for putting on cooked vegetables, particularly for asparagus. Cook your asparagus in chicken stock until tender, top with the sauce and pepper to taste.

  • Once You Go Black…

    By But I like cocktails and lurking

    I am not a big fan of beans, or at least I didn’t used to be. Then I discovered black beans. I never cook with any other bean. They are less grainy, more flavorful, and heartier than other beans. They just have more substance. They can make a stand alone meal, a side dish, or compliment any main dish. Let us explore the magic of this under appreciated hero of the bean world.

    Black Bean Dip

    Not as tasty as this recipe.

    1 15oz can of unseasoned black beans
    3 strips of bacon microwaved just short of crispy (3 minutes on high then 30 second intervals until done)
    1/3 sweet onion
    2 chicken boullion cubes
    ½ teaspoon crushed garlic
    ½ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

    Pre-grated cheddar cheese
    Fresh chopped tomato
    Sliced pickled jalepeno

    Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor. Blend on high until it has a smooth consistency. Use a silicone spatula or spoon to scrape into a small oven-safe dish. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until you see bubbling. It is essentially re-fried black beans made in ¼ the time.

    Top with grated cheese, chopped tomato, chopped fresh red onion, and a few jalepeno slices. Dip with corn chips.

    This is a recipe for two people. Double if you have more people. My wife and I will whip this up, usually on a Sunday evening, sit in front of the TV and watch a movie while we eat. It makes quite a satisfying meal.

    Bean Dip As A Compliment

    If I make a taco salad, enchiladas, tacos, nachos, or any similar dish, I use the black bean dip as a foundation for all of the other ingredients. I simply spoon it onto the shell/tortilla before putting the meat on. It is a wonderful complimentary flavor.

    Black Bean Soup or Black Beans and Rice

    Put all of the same ingredients into a pot. No processor this time. You can put one pork neck bone instead of the bacon if you like, otherwise slice the bacon into 1 inch sections and toss in raw. Chop the onions yourself. Toss a few slices of jalepeno in. Thin with 1-2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, turn down to simmer, and cover. When the meat comes off of the neckbone easily, it is done (about one hour). Pull the meat off of the bone with your fingers and put back in the pot. Toss the bone to the dog. Serve over rice. If you thinned it down with water to a soup, serve over rice in a bowl. If no rice, then with Ritz crackers or corn chips. If you left it thick enough, you can spoon over rice on a plate. This can also be served as a nice complimentary side dish to any non-soup main dish.

    Very little effort and time is required for these recipes and the payoff is sweet.

  • Manly Monday

    Some links mildly NSFW*

    I have it on good authority the that snow is melting rapidly on the SoCal ski slopes, but before it does I figured I’d get in a crack about biathletes. I figure everyone here can get behind a sport comprised of skiing and shooting things AND as a National Siblings Day bonus we have the Fourcade brothers. Now Martin is ostensibly the better biathlete, and he’s not hard on the eyes either, but I’d let Simon eat crackers in bed. He’s got a great body, likes to show off (I dare not do more than happy baby on a paddleboard), is very photogenic and knows it. He balances goofy and sexpot with aplomb, much like other jesse.in.mb favorite Chris Pratt. It doesn’t hurt that he’s perfectly happy to bare dat ass.

    I’m not sure why, but he was photographed twice for the Dieux Du Stade calendar, this year (see link for “aplomb”) and in 2015 where he posed on a 55 gallon drum (because Santa came early…and so did jesse.in.mb).

    *Specifically biathletes (woman) and shooting (women), sexpot (man), aplomb (man), dat ass (man) and 55 gallon drum (man).

     

  • Belly Up To The Bar

    Summer Wines Make Me Feel Fine by OMWC

    As the days get longer, the green shoots peep through the layer of accumulated dogshit left when the snow melts, and my grill beckons for rust removal, my fancy turns from big, heavy red wines to wines which are a bit lighter, more agile, more suited for warm breezes and sunshine. Riven recommended a rhubarb wine she gets locally. Don’t be like Riven. Let’s consider a few nice bottles that might not be on your radar screen. There’s many, many more possibilities, but these are what’s for dinner chez OMWC/SP.

    First and foremost, SP and I have an unnatural love for Bugey Cerdon, the greatest summer wine in existence. Bugey Cerdon is lightly carbonated, pink, slightly sweet, and more than slightly earthy. It’s made from Gamay (the grape used for Beaujolais) and Ploussard (you never heard of it) grapes grown in the Ain region of France, which is tucked between Lyon and Geneva, and within a radioactive whiff of the Large Hadron Collider. The alcohol levels tend to be low (8% is typical), and there’s a crispness and snap which elevates it above most other off-dry pink wines. The method used is an old one – the wine is partially fermented, then bottled to finish fermentation. Unlike Champagne, there’s no added sugar, so the bubbliness is more subtle and muted. This is my safest recommendation – EVERYONE loves this shit, and it goes great with food or can be a warm-up before doing serious drinking. Our favorites are Renardat-Fache and (easier to find) Bottex “La Cueille.”

    Next up, Beaujolais. Yeah, yeah, you think you know about that one. You don’t. The market is dominated by Georges duBoeuf, and his industrial product defines “mediocre.” And they tend to smell like bananas because of the particular cultured yeast strain used. Fuck that, take a walk on the wild side. What you want is a single-producer wine, one made by a guy with big, rough, hands and who doesn’t own a suit. There are a bunch of these (Michel Tete, Alain Coudert, Jean Foillard, Louis Desvignes, to name some that we love), but the primus inter pares is Jean-Paul Brun’s fabulous Terres Dorees. The reds are, as required, made exclusively from Gamay grapes, wild yeasts, and minimal processing. It’s the opposite of an industrial product. If we see any of the l’Ancien or Cote de Brouilly, we max out our credit cards. But you can’t go wrong with any of the names I mentioned. Keep your eyes open for the rarely seen but eminently wonderful Beaujolais Blanc from one of the farmers – this is what Chardonnay would be like if only it were more interesting. Racy acidity, stony minerality, none of that heavy, oaky crap that California spews.

    And lest I run on too long, I’ll tout what reputedly is the best seafood raw bar wine on the planet: Muscadet. And of all Muscadet, Domaine de la Pépière is what I’d want to be drinking tonight, at least if I were out of Luneau-Papin. Domaine de la Pépière makes an array of them at prices ranging from friendly to oh my, but you can’t go wrong here. Stony, steely, a hint of almost saltiness, and an acidity that just begs you to put some deep fried food into your whore mouth. This is serious wine, but so delightfully refreshing as the sun gets low in the sky and the food on the grill crackles and crusts.

    Too long, so I won’t mention Gruener Veltliner Federspiel except to mention it. You know what to do.

    Derpetologist’s Spot the Not: Maine Governor Paul LePage

    1. What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back. We could have public executions.

    2. The traffickers … these are guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys that come from Connecticut, New York. They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home.

    3. They never admit it, but most women like it when a strong man takes control and slaps them when they get out of line.

    4. Sen. Jackson claims to be for the people, but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.

    5. If you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. And so the worst case is some women might have little beards.

    6. Everybody looks at the negative effects of global warming, but with the ice melting, the Northern Passage has opened up.

    Bonus: Bill O’Reilly

    1. It’s discipline that begets love.

    2. You don’t have free will when you have lung cancer.

    3. Americans will respect your beliefs if you just keep them private.

  • Fur Friday

    So I assume you saw the excerpt and automatically assumed that I was going to do a post about fur-persons who identified as dogs or ladies who dabble in pup play or those that go all out, and maybe a trio of men in the most wholesome (and SFW) picture linked in this sentence, but no! Today I’m talking about the bastardized spawn of corgis and other breeds of dogs. They are fucking adorable.

    Look at that good pupper!

    Because internet there are entire blogs dedicated to husky/corgi mixes, and lists of the most adorable corgi mixes. In closing here is a picture of Ein because a bunch of you are inveterate nerds.

  • Seafood Bisque in 20 Minutes

    By But I like cocktails and lurking

    Not all roux’s are created equally. Despite the unique, delicious flavor of a flour/oil roux, it isn’t suitable for all dishes. You can make a roux from flour/butter and though the process is the same the resulting taste is quite different. A proper bisque requires a creamier base, usually seafood stock with milk or cream, and can require a fair amount of preparation. Since we are concerned with shortening time and effort, we will take a few shortcuts and still end up with a gourmet quality soup. It is a little more effort than the other recipes but well worth it. At least a dozen times every year people call me requesting that I prepare this.

    12oz – 16oz frozen cooked and prepared seafood (crawfish is my favorite but shrimp or lobster is fine)
    1 can of chipped crab meat (the cheap stuff, not the expensive lump meat)
    2/3 stick of butter
    ½ of a medium sweet onion – chopped
    ¼ cup of white flour
    1 pint of heavy whipping cream
    1 to 1-1/2 quarts of whole milk
    6 chicken boullion cubes
    1 capfull of Zataran’s liquid crab boil
    1 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper
    1 tablespoon of chopped garlic or 1 teaspoon of powdered garlic

    Melt the butter in a stock pot over medium heat. Toss in the chopped onion and garlic, then stir. Make sure the onion/garlic is well coated in butter and stir occasionally until the onion starts to become clear.

    Sprinkle the flour over the butter/onion with your hand. Swish around with your spoon until the flour is saturated with butter and evenly mixed in. Keep stirring and cooking until you see your butter going from yellow to a light tan. Don’t let the flour stick to the pot or darken too much. You have just made a blonde roux with onions and garlic.

    Quickly pour in the pint of heavy whipping cream that you had open and sitting in easy reach. Swish around with a whisk and scrape the bottom of the pot until all of the roux is evenly mixed. Pour in your milk. Toss in the chicken boullion, cayenne, liquid crab boil, and the can of crab meat. Note that the crab meat has a small piece of paper in it. Don’t put the paper in your soup, but make sure you do put the liquid from the can in with the meat.

    Homemade Seafood Bisque with Cream and Parsley

    Stir this well and turn the heat up to medium high. Bring it to a boil and keep stirring constantly. After it begins to boil count slowly to 30 while you stir, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot, and watch carefully that the pot doesn’t boil over. If it appears that the pot may boil over simply remove from heat and turn heat down before putting the pot back on. After you have counted to 30 with the pot boiling, turn the heat down to simmer, and stir in your seafood meat. Make sure you put all of the liquid from the seafood in with the meat. The bisque should thicken as it cools.

    If you want to fancy it up serve in a bowl and sprinkle with fresh chopped green onion or chives and some garlic bread. Otherwise just serve in a bowl.

    *Some people like whole kernel corn in their seafood bisque. If you are one of those people, simply add a can of whole kernel corn after you have completed the process. If you want it creamier still or to add a slightly different flavor you can add in a half-cup of sour cream or cream cheese.

    This is NOT a low carb dish but is so creamy and delicious that it will become a favorite. If you have all of your ingredients out and a relatively clean kitchen, a pot, knife, and whisk handy you can whip this up in under twenty minutes.

  • Reviews You’ll Never Use: Gargoyles (1972)

    Greetings once again, fellow intrepid interlocutors of the insidious and the incredible, it is I, your humble author, once again delving into his personal DVD archive to bring you only the finest is bizarro horror filmmaking.

    This week we take a look at the largely forgotten 1972 made-for-tv movie, Gargoyles. I’m afraid I don’t have much to regale you with in terms of production information; such is lost in the sands of time. And in the sands of New Mexico, where this beauty was filmed on a single camera in 18 days.

    Opening title card. It’s always promising when they go with “day-glo slime” font.

    No dear readers, this film is remembered for one reason, and one reason only: the exemplary practical gargoyle effects, made for zero dollars and whipped up over only a few days time. Now when I say, “exemplary,” understand that I’m grading on a curve here. Obviously, they don’t touch what is seen in much larger budget films. The costume designer was a fellow named Tom Dawson, who also did the wardrobe and costume effects for Blazing Saddles and Arnold Schwarzenegger crap-fest End of Days. It is interesting, however, to note that one of two people tasked with creating and applying the gargoyle makeup is Stan Winston, in his first credited special effects role. If after perusing that link you find yourself still unimpressed with the fine work of Mr. Winston, then you can go right to hell – my reviews are not for the likes of you.

    Our story begins with a voice over explaining that gargoyles are actually the earthly spawn of Satan himself and that they arise every 600 years to try and take over the planet. However, it appears humans whip dat azz pretty badly every time because the creatures are now on the verge of extinction. However, it does result in many of the world’s myths about monsters.

    Cut to anthropologist Cornel Wilde (who, fun fact, was blacklisted during the HUAC era) taking a drive through the desert, with daughter Jennifer Salt in tow (Salt would later touch again on the world of the macabre as a producer for sometimes-great-sometimes-dumb FX staple American Horror Story). Interestingly, throughout the film, Jennifer always seems to wear her shirts tied up to show off her stomach, which is, I suppose, something of a welcome diversion. Coming across a barely-functional roadside tourist trap run by lovable old Uncle Willie, the drunken coot ushers them out back to show them his prized possession: a gargoyle skeleton hung up in his shed out back. Willie proceeds to tell the anthropologist (the character has a name, but does it really matter?) about how the Injuns in the area used to have a lot of stories about these and….you know what, it’s just the usual hokum spun out in crappy horror movies. I’m so damned sick of people acting like/assuming that a bunch of freaking dudes dancing around smoking peyote have some kind of magical powers or great insight into the universe that I lack because I wear pants. Fuck that noise.

    Bernie Casey is a Critical Monster Studies Professor

    Anyway, the titular monsters attack, killing Uncle Willie and driving Generic Anthropologist and Hot Daughter to seek refuge at a nearby roach motel run by horny drunk Grayson Hall (best known for her long-running stint as Dr. Julia Hoffman on the original Dark Shadows). Having escaped with the gargoyle skull from Willie’s shed and with audio recordings of the attack, our protagonists try to make sense of all the shenanigans and goings on. They are attacked again by two of the creatures trying to retrieve the skull, and once they have it, they flee across the road only for one of them to be hilariously run over by a semi. It comes out of nowhere and is really quite funny, because normally when you see the creatures running or attacking, they director uses a kind of weird slow-mo, so it cuts straight from that, to a damn truck coming out of nowhere and smacking one of them.

    “I don’t remember you from the faculty meetings at UCLA…”

    Running to the police station to report the latest attack, Hot Daughter pleads with the cops to believe her, and to release several dirt bikers they caught at the scene of Uncle Willie’s earlier that day (the lead biker being played by Scott Glenn, who is one of those guys whose name you don’t know but you’ll recognize him when you read through his IMDB). On her way back, she’s kidnapped by King Gargoyle…Bernie Casey?! I think that’d be racist today. You may know him from his work in Revenge of the Nerds or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but because I’m me, I’ll always remember him from Suzanne Somers and Stacey Keach eco-horror film, Ants. Yes, I have that on DVD as well. Anyway, the actually pretty awesome looking head gargoyle takes Hot Daughter back to their cave, where he explains that 1) they’ve only been woke for a few weeks, 2) he’s taught himself pretty good English in that time, and 3) he likes to have chicks read stories about 15th century rapes out of scholarly books to him. We also see the gargoyle hatchery, where eggs literally half the size of the adults hatch the creatures, and we learn that the ones with wings (such as Casey and his female gargoyle consort) are “breeders”.

    A close-up of the really quite good monster makeup used in this film

    Generic Anthropologist convinces the cops and the local dirt bikers to help search for Hot Daughter, and the group is eventually assaulted by the gargoyles. The humans manage to kill a lot of them with shotguns and pistols, which really makes one wonder how the whole, “We’re going to exterminate humanity” thing is going to work out for the monsters. Scott Glenn goes in to throw gas around and burns the hatchery, and upon seeing him beset with gargoyles, Generic Anthropologist declares him dead and flees (he did the same to Uncle Willie earlier – seriously, the guy will decide you’re a lost cause within seconds of you running into any adverse circumstance). The supposedly thousands of eggs burn up from the two gas cans splashed around one room, and Bernie Casey, along with his consort, try to fly away with Hot Daughter to, I guess, rape the shit out of her, since it’s pretty clearly established that the monsters only produce offspring with each other. However, Generic Anthropologist makes a Quick Decision and uses a handy rock to bust the consort gargoyle’s wing, forcing Bernie Casey to abandon Hot Daughter so that he can fly away with his basic bitch. And…that’s it. They get away, they end.

    Bernie Casey: Critical Monster Studies Professor’s breeder counterpart. She actually gets jealous of Hot Daughter and helps Generic Anthropologist to escape at one point, dooming her entire race because she can’t control her womanish cattiness.

    The movie basically sucks, but really, if you have the 74 minutes to spare, it is honestly remarkable how good they do with the gargoyle costumes given what you know must have been incredible time and budgetary constraints. So kudos for that. Director Bill Norton went on to acclaim *coughbullshitcough* as the director of such masterpieces as More American Graffiti, and Hercules and the Amazon Women. If any of you have seen either of these, sound off in the comments.

    Actually please don’t, nobody gives a shit.

    On a parting note, apparently it’s not safe to trust the TCM website’s user-generated movie ratings, because holy hell, check this out. The lowest one is 4.31  out of 5.

    Personally, I award Gargoyles 10 Pubic Hair Cartoons out of a possible 30. Keep track of the percentages here; 10 isn’t very good.

     

     

     

  • Making Cooking Easy and Your Day Better – Louisiana Gumbo Edition

    By But I like cocktails and lurking

    I have had a few requests for some of the recipes that I have posted in comments over the years so I thought putting them up here would be easier for any interested parties to find. After hearing about some of the cooking mistakes from the inexperienced and how some people are pressed for time, I thought it would be handy if I compressed/condensed the recipes and methods so that anyone can eat gourmet quality food with very little effort and time. I hope you all enjoy these immensely. Really good food can only make your life better. This is gourmet food for the non-gourmet chef.

    Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, was famous for beginning his recipes with “First, you make a roux.” Justin knew what he was talking about.

    I am going to give instructions on how to make a basic roux but I recommend buying your roux ready made from the grocery store. They are identical in taste and quality. The only disadvantage in buying roux is that the pre-made roux tends to settle on their way to your kitchen and can take some effort and time to stir back into a homogenous consistency. The only reason you should make your roux is if you can’t find any to buy or if you want a special roux made differently.

    Practicing making a roux is easy, cheap, and doesn’t take long to master. Start with a warm skillet, a good whisk, and a pot set aside to put the roux in. Put equal parts white flour and oil into the skillet and whisk until there are no lumps. I have tried various flours and found that the best, by far, is plain bleached wheat flour. Any good vegetable oil will do. A quarter cup of flour and a quarter cup of oil will make plenty of roux for any large pot of whatever dish you are making.

    Turn the heat up to medium-high and stir occasionally until you see the oil-flour mixture begin to boil. Begin whisking constantly. If it begins to smoke you have the heat too high. The constant stirring keeps any of the oil-flour mixture from sitting on the hot pan surface long enough to burn. Continue doing this until you see the flour start to brown. When it gets to the color of caramel you have made a light roux. You can remove the skillet from the heat now if a light roux was your goal. Because the pan and oil are still hot, it will continue to cook the flour for a short time and possibly brown it further. To prevent this, empty the pan into the cool pot you have set aside.

    If you want a darker roux continue to cook and stir the roux until it reaches the color of milk chocolate. If you are really adventurous you can cook it to the color of dark chocolate but you run the risk of burning your roux.

    The light roux will have less flavor and will thicken your dish, the darker roux will flavor your dish more and not thicken as much.

    For taste you can experiment with different oils. I find that peanut and sesame oils have a much nuttier taste, lard is more hearty, and the various other vegetable oils are more generic but still satisfactory.

    If you are worried about calorie counts, don’t be. A little roux goes a long way. The oil coats the flour granules and makes them more difficult to digest. The darker you make the roux, the more you cook it, the fewer calories there are to be digested.

    Again, unless you are shooting for something unique like a sesame roux, it is much easier to buy your roux ready made. There are numerous brands of ready-made roux; they are all identical and as good as what you can make yourself. It only takes a few minutes to make a roux but having it ready made is a real time saver. Buy your roux. It is usually found in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store and is economical.


    How to throw together a first class meal in fifteen minutes

    1/4 – 1/3 cup of prepared dark roux. A light roux will do but a dark one is preferred
    1 12oz to 16oz bag of frozen seasoning blend (onion, bell pepper, celery mixture)
    6-8 chicken bouillon cubes
    1 cap-full of Zataran’s liquid crab boil
    1 teaspoon (less if you are a wimp) Cayenne pepper
    1 tablespoon crushed garlic or 1 teaspoon powdered garlic
    Dark chicken (8 boneless, skinless thighs or 4 leg quarters)
    About 2 lbs of cajun sausage, sliced ¼ inch thick
    6-8 cups of water – to cover the meats

    If you are in a hurry you can simply throw all of these ingredients into a large stock pot cold, adding the water last to just cover the meats. Cover your pot and bring to a low boil for about one hour. There is no need to precook or mix anything. The boiling will do all of that for you. While it is boiling, an occasional poke with a spoon isn’t a bad idea. After you have turned the heat on you can start the rice, put away all of your ingredients, wash any dishes if there are any. (There shouldn’t be aside from the measuring spoons. All you needed to do was open packages, the pot is on the stove, and the stirring spoon is next to the pot on a trivet or spoon-rest.) When your significant other/others arrive all they will see is a clean kitchen, a boiling pot, and the air will be filled with the most delicious smell. Serve over rice.

    – Get yourself a microwave rice cooker. It is a simple plastic pot with a snap-on lid and a vent. It only costs a couple of bucks. To make your rice, put two cups of water, one cup of rice (basmati is best), two chicken bouillon cubes, one and a half tablespoons of butter, and about one tablespoon of dried, sweet basil in the pot. Microwave on high for 15 minutes.
    You can taste the rice but don’t let anyone else taste it before serving the meal. They will eat all of your rice right out of the cooker.

    Lastly, while you are in the Cajun food section of the grocery store, keep your eyes peeled for gumbo file’. It is dried and finely ground sassafras leaves. After you have served your gumbo over rice you can sprinkle this over the top of your dish.

    This is a perfect recipe for anyone who wants really good, authentic home-cooked meals but doesn’t have a lot of time. It is easy, fast, and doesn’t take a master chef. I am looking at you Commodius Spittoon. It is also a perfect recipe for any restaurant because it can be made in bulk in minimal time and sold by the bowl for a good profit. It will draw a large, hungry crowd, especially in cold weather. Trust me, they will keep coming back.

  • Manly Monday

    Work has the better of me so I’m going to keep the analytics you don’t read anyway short and get to the video of strong men picking things up, setting them down in slightly different places, hugging, and ripping each others’ shirts off. Bonus points for those who find burly fellows attractive, one of the men is Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, aka The Mountain, who is not only strong, but adorable. The other is British strongman Eddie Hall who is large in a way I find somewhat unappealing, but the man is impressive both in picking things up and putting them down again in slightly different places, but also swimming.

    Warty sent me a link to a paywalled video of this event which is much better, but–you know–paywalled, so you’ll have to make do with the potato-quality one here. I highly recommend watching to the end: