Notival

Im really loving the new grill. Seriously, what's not to love? It cooks food great, and cuts down on the number of dishes since Im not using a pot or pan for whatever Im grilling.

I haven't mastered all aspects of it yet, though. Saturday, I made grilled plank salmon. Which involves cooking the fish on a board on the grill. It was going swimmingly for at least ten minutes. Then I went upstairs for about five minutes, and when I came back down, I could see flames through the side of the grill.

Sure enough, the plank had caught fire on the edges and was burning quite nicely. My first thought was to pour the marinade on it to douse the flame and further flavor the fish, but I decided against that since it was mostly oil and brown sugar. Ninsi was watching and grabbed a cup of water, but I didnt want to throw water on the grill, so I used the tongs to hold the flaming plank, and put the fish on the upper grill and took the plank to the side of the house and ran water on it. I had already soaked it for a few hours prior to using it, so I hadn't really expected it to catch fire.

My salmon was fine. It was pretty much done anyway. It was just a little more blackened than I had wanted. I am pretty sure I know where I messed up and will correct it this weekend maybe. Now if I can just train Ninsi to turn the gas off when she finishes using the grill, I'll be set.

I started making ice cream last night. I did not expect it to take hours upon hours.

Generally, you put some milk, and some cream, and some sugar and maybe an egg into a bowl and turn on the ice cream machine for a half hour and it makes ice cream. Last night, about nine o'clock, I throught Id try some fancy ice cream. I'd already bought a vanilla bean (for six and a half frelling dollars) so I had everything I needed. I had not read through the recipe fully. Otherwise, I would have started earlier. It involved boiling and simmering. Which took about an hour. Then mixing and heating. Which took another half hour. Then chilling completely. Which is about an hour. And only then! do you actually get to put the custard like mix into the machine to stir it up into ice cream. I put it in the fridge to chill and went to bed. Ninsi was off work today, so she got to stay home and acutally put it in the mixer. It better be damn good. But expectations are low.

While Ninsi and I were eating dinner last night, the phone rang. I answered. It was AT&T, and the woman said that our bill rate was about to increase. She also started to say some other stuff, but I was eating, so I hung up on her. Today, I called AT&T to find out if she was full of manure or not. She wasn't. At least, not really.

As near as I can figure from the conversation I had today with AT&T, they have changed their rate plans. And our rate for DSL was going to increase from $24 to $41 dollars. That's a pretty big jump. They had another category - Elite (we had the 'pro' service) that was only $34 dollars though, and offered faster download speed than the Pro. So she switched me to that one. Which means our bill is still going up. But when I asked her what the new bill would be, she quote me a price that is $5 less than what we have been paying the past few months. I dont know what the hell she did. Maybe put us the plan that a new user gets, since I did let her know that now would be an opportune time for me to start looking at new DSL and TV providers. Whatever. Our bill should be less. I think Id still rather have fiber though.

Speaking of last night's dinner: I made beans. Ninsi, added her own personal touch to the beans by dropping in a half jar of hot peppers. Not Jalepeno's, but rather a jar of peppers that we usually just use the juice out of for some spice. Half a jar. The beans tasted real good, but they were rough on the belly after only a couple minutes. That's the kind of thing that can cause a wife to sleep in the other room sometime...

Got my INR back today. Im at 1.3, so it has gone up, slightly. But not enough. Im starting to figure out why...

Ninsi wanted some blackberries when we were at the Farmer's Market last weekend. So we got some, and she gave some to me. She also cooked me dinner Monday night, and used a lot of soy sauce. And last night, she made me a salad with baby spinich.

Today, since my INR was not as high as hoped, I did some intergooglin' and found a site that listed Vitamin K amounts for various foods.

For a person taking Coumadin who is trying to increase his INR, you know what I can't eat?
Blackberries,
Soybeans,
Salads with Spinich.

Fortunately for me, I didnt eat the salad. I talked to the nurse for a bit and she was going back and forth to the doctor. Apparently they just assumed people dont eat as much fruit as I do. My diet is too healthy for this drug. It's a good thing I didnt get asparagus with my fish two days ago. That's even worse than blackberries.

The sum of my conversation with the nurse? Eat slightly less healthy - doctor's orders.
Now, who doesnt want to be me? ;)

We are having a dinner party Saturday. We have a total of fourteen chairs in the house. Today, the number of guests jumped from 13 to 18. Four of those new ones are kids.

It will be interesting to see if we can actually get everyone seated. Reptile is going to bring Zero's folding chairs, so we should have enough actual space for butts. However, that doesn't mean we have enough table or floor space for everyone.

I'll be working on the logistics of seating arrangements on Saturday while Im cooking. I have a turkey. It's only 16.67 pounds. I fear it may not be quite enough. Granted, there will be more than ample supply of desserts. But I will probably go and buy a small ham to augment the turkey anyway.

Or I could just get a small chicken and put it on the rotisserie. hmm. That might not be a bad idea. Though, I think if I get a ham, I wont have to actually cook it. And it will probably be hot on Saturday.

Sunday, we clean.

Ah, back to the blog again. I pretty much totally forgot about it over the last week, since I was mostly hanging out at the house. When I wasnt hanging out at the mall with the Squid while she shopped.

We had a good time. Her cousin came down with her, and they kept each other entertained most of the time, so it wasnt too rough on me. Did some shopping, some Six Flags, and some cooking. We made pizzas last week, and I'll have to post the picture of Ninsi's. It's pretty special looking. Gotta work on the dough a little bit, but otherwise, the pizzas were good. Ninsi made another one last night which looked much much better.

I took the Squid back to OK last Friday. That same day my older brother got married. And also on that day my great aunt passed away.

So, that's three relatives Ive lost in about a span of six weeks. Let's hope that is over and done with.

Ninsi and I are supposed to go do the delegate thing this Saturday morning. And outside of that, I dont think we have anything planned until next week when we have our 2nd anniversary. Followed a few days later by my birthday. I'm starting to get up there a little bit.

It is almost time to start thinking about getting some tomatoes into the ground. So i may start working on that this weekend some. Maybe I'll have better luck than last year when the whole operation was a failure, except for the one that blew away in a windstorm and took root under the deck. It just did it too late. It produced fruit, but it started to freeze again before any could ripen.

I think I'll spend some time at the home improvement store, for sure. May not buy much, but there are spring projects on the horizon that I have to start thinking about. mmmmm Spring.

Im a cool guy. Ninja coo. All of the time. Except for some of the time, when I'm not quite. One of those instances happened last night.

I made pizza. I've done it before, I'll do it again.
All was going well. I had cooked my sausage, and pre-cooked my crust and the pizza itself was actually done and on my plate.

I grabbed the crushed Red Pepper from the cabinet, took off the lid, and began it shake some out on my pizza. Instead of shake out, it came out in a pour. And it wasn't red pepper. It was Cinnamon.

Yes, I had just covered one piece of pizza in cinnamon. Im not sure why it was in the spot where i was expecting pepper.

Undeterred, I put the cinnamon up, and grabbed the crushed Red Pepper, took off the lid, and began to shake it out on top of the cinnamon. Instead of shaking out, it came out in a pour. And it wasn't crushed red pepper. It was ground Cayenne pepper.

So, not only did I fail twice to put Crushed Red Pepper on my pizza but it was now super-hot and super-cinnamonny. About the time I finished cursing myself out for this Fail, I heard a piercing scream behind me that did not stop. Ninsi was hopping around on one foot because she had dropped a piece of steaming hot pizza cheese on her toe and it was apparently eating through her flesh. Once she finished screaming, she even said she probably should have kicked it off her foot sooner.

What happened to the cinnamon pizza? I ate it. I felt it was proper punishment for such a huge fail. I wont say it was good, I will say it was full of taste.

And God said - "...and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle"...

Sometimes, I like to cook. And usually, I do it pretty well. Every now and then, I do it up fucking right.

Sunday, I cooked a roast. It's so good I want to have it for breakfast in the mornings. The broth is like ambrosia. I made a sandwich out of some of it tonight for dinner, and every bite was sublime.

I have to say, this roast is what is meant by letting Man have dominion over cattle.