New Year's Resolutions

Well, here we are at another New Year's Eve. Time to celebrate the beginning of a new year. I always wondered, if we're celebrating a new year, does that mean the old year sucked totally? Think about it. If this year is great, we would not celebrate the end of it. On the other hand, if the old year sucked, then we'd celebrate a new year since we can't wait to get rid of the old one. Substitute 'car' for 'year'. You would celebrate a new car if your old one was such a piece of crap that you had to get rid of it. If you have a new car but your old one is still pretty cool, then you get a new car that sucks, who celebrates that? But nooooooo, we just celebrate the new year without any idea of whether the new one will really be better. Oh well.


Here are my New Year's Resolutions:

1) Clean out the garage so I can actually park my truck in it.

2) Barbeque more. Much more. You may see many more food and BBQ posts on my blog soon.

3) Work on more electronics and computer projects. I have not put any posts up yet about my interests in electronics and computers. This will probably change.

4) Work on recording some of my original music I have written. This is something I've done in the past but never really finished.

5) Limit my resolutions to 4, then stop.



Whew, that sounds like a lot of work. Good thing I have one year to do it.

Christmas

Cristmas time with family - 2008.

Here are some pictures of the food and trees from our gatherings. Again, family members were shy about having their pictures on my blog, but I'm trying to wear them down.

Oh, and I got a Garmin. Yeay! I tried it out last night and it seems to work pretty well so far. I'm just glad it came with it's own battery.

Joys Of Owning Your Own Home - Part 2 - Snowstorms

Oh how I love my home. Normally I am quite proud of being able to do yardwork and landscaping on my own without having to hire a landscaper. Unfortunately, this also means I have to shovel snow myself. Here's a nice little video I took of our latest snowstorm here in Amherst, NY. I took this video AFTER I had already shoveled out the driveway. Looks like I'll being doing it again soon...

Are We There Yet?????

Here's a link to some info on when meat is done:

http://www.grillingcompanion.com/meat-doneness-temperatures/

The site has some good stuff on it.

http://www.grillingcompanion.com/

A good digital meat thermometer is a good investment for getting meat cooked enough to be safe, but not too much so you don't dry it out.

Time For Some Beer

OK People - Time For Some Beer!!!

The last few weeks I have sampled some good beer. I took a chance on something called Shipyard beer. I was hoping it would not taste like a shipwreck. I was not disappointed! Good beer.

The beer was good.
I sampled some during a recent Buffalo Bills football game.
The beer was good. The Bills were bad. The Bills looked like a SHIPWRECK! The beer was quite tasty.
The Bills are in business making lots of money. I hope the company that makes Shipyard beer is doing at least as good.
Well, there's always the Sabres...

The Toronto Bills?

I saw an interesting article in the Buffalo News about the Buffalo Bills playing in Toronto.

http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/519766.html

On the one hand, how obvious can it be that some people want to buy the Bills and move the team to T O? On the other hand, who in Toronto would want to go and watch a pro sports team that can't win a big game when it needs to? All those people are already Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fans. What if they don't have enough money left over after rooting for the Leafs? Maybe there would be enough, T O is a big city.

Tonight I Eat Steak

On this night - I eat STEAK!

I got a couple NY Strip steaks from Federal Meats. They looked good.

I decided to try one steak with Emeril's SouthWest rub, and the other one with a rub from Wegman's.

375 degrees for probably about 45 minutes. Flipped 'em over once after about 20 minutes and added some more rub to the side that was on the bottom.

Delicious. Emeril's rub - could have had some heat. I thought SouthWest style stuff was supposed to be hot. The Wegman's Rub - a nice hint of celery.

The verdict: Excellent steaks. Flavor. Texture. Aroma. I decided to leave veggies and bread off the menu so I had more room for steak.

Formula1 Racing - Goodbye Honda

So Honda is quitting Formula1 racing.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/motor/formula1/2008-12-05-honda_N.htm

This really sucks. Not that I love Honda or anything, but does this mean other car makers are in the same situation? Probably.

Honda makes the engines in the Indycar racing league also. I wonder if this means they are next on the chopping block.

F1 is saying they may start the season with only 18 cars.

$300 million bucks to compete - wow. I guess auto racing just has huge costs. Makes sense when you think about all the cars, parts, skilled techs & mechanics, all the tools you need, etc. Then travel expenses on top of that to visit racetracks around the world. And to add insult to injury, you finish second-last place out of what, 10 teams? Constructors they call them.

That's too bad.

Joys Of Owning Your Own Home - Part 1 - Patching Concrete

Oh how I love my home. Recently I worked on a project to patch some concrete sidewalks in the front yard by the road. The town sent me a letter saying I was a bad boy by not taking care of my sidewalks. I had to "repair" them by a certain deadline. They did not specify the exact nature of the repairs, except to say I could not allow any cracks to exist that were more than 1/2" wide, and I could not allow any part to be 1/2" taller than the next part. I guess this is to keep people who have trouble walking from getting injured or killed by the sidewalk's cracks. At first I said "I'll get right on it - yeah, really" but then I kept reading the letter and found something about getting fined if I did not comply. So naturally, I concluded I could patch the cracks rather than replace the whole section. Why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself? Especially today with the internet. I found all kinds of websites with info on how to patch concrete. The concept of what to do is fairly easy. The work needed to do it is not terribly physical unless you have to move conrete around in a wheel barrow. I did have aching muscles though.

Here are some "before" pictures. I thought it was very nice of the paint can operator to mark where the repairs were needed by the letter R.

First I had to get a hammer & chisel, and chop out the areas in the cracks. For the largest cracks I also had to get the weed-wacker out and carve out the mud, grass and roots from between the cracks. Dirty work. I wore goggles. I felt good about doing dirty work that requires a little muscle.

Here's a section with the biggest cracks in it.

Nice.

Here are some shots of the patched concrete.

Well I have to admit I actually had a good time doing this project. Ever since, when I see some freshly poured concrete as I drive around town, I feel like I'm part of a brotherhood. Huah!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone again. I had a very good time visiting with family. I took a lot of pictures. Some of my family members were a little shy about having their pictures on my blog, so instead I'll post pictures of the delicious food we had.





Some food cooking away on the stove...
























The shrimp dish...










The mac & cheese dish...








... and of course, the turkey.

Meet The Meat Charts

Whenever I go shopping for good cuts of meat, I always get confused by all the different types of meat there are. Confused, until I look at a chart or 2 to refresh my memory. Different cuts of meat come from different parts of the animal, and have different taste and tenderness characteristics. I found some charts on http://www.cookshack.com/ and I went to the Cooking link on the menu bar, then Meat Cut Charts. I always try to give a free, shameless plug to anyone who gives me valuable information for free on the internet.

http://www.cookshack.com/meat-cut-charts

Hope this is helpful to you, although these charts don't tell the whole story. You just have to try cooking/barbecue-ing the different cuts to know for sure what you are doing, and to find out what you like.

John Entwistle video

John Entwistle video: a video about one of my favorite bass players. Plus it has some of my other favorite bass players talking about how great he was. Priceless, if you're a bass player.

PEEETSAAAHHH

Yesterday I made some homemade pizza. It was absolutely great. I used some fresh WHOLE WHEAT pizza dough (trying to make this healthy & wholesome), some pizza sauce (which had to be enriched with basil and oregeno before it smelled like pizza sauce), some shredded mozzarella cheeze, and some pepperoni.

It was so good I was ready to call Chef Ramsey on the phone and say "<<<>>> Top this you <<>>> in chef wanna-be!!!


But I knew he was probably too busy to talk to me so I didn't bother.


Also, if you look at the pictures closely, you can see I shop at Wegman's.


I'm glad I made this. I made this as I watched Monday night football, and watched the Buffalo Bills lose an absolutely critical Must-Win game. At least the pizza was great.

JIMMY WINS THE CUP ! ! ! ! !

JIMMY WINS THE CUP ! ! ! ! !


Yesterday Jimmy Johnson finished 15th in the final NASCAR Sprint Cup Race of 2008 - which means he had enough points to WIN THE SPRINT CUP !!! !!! !!! YEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

That deserves a huge woo-hoo.

That means he's won 3 championships in a row. This ties the record of most consecutive championships, tied with Cale Yarborough.

Jimmy Johnson is one of the Great Ones. Yes, like Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, Tiger Woods.

If he wins it again next year, he will become God.

Plus, next year Mark Martin will join the Hendrick team. Too cool.

Two good BBQ rubs from last summer

Here are a couple good rubs I made for barbecue this past summer. The one with lemon zest was great on chicken and the other rub was used on ribs. I'm sure they would be great on other meats as well and when I try this out, I'll let you know how it went.

























Rib Rub:

2 tsp celery salt
6 tsp paprika
1 tsp black pepper, fresh ground
1 1/2 tsp garlic salt


I used this rub on ribs and I cooked them indirect method on a weber grill using hickory wood chips for smoke flavoring. They were great.


Chicken rub:

4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp rosemary, crushed
2 tsp sea salt, iodized
1 1/2 tsp lemon zest, fresh
1 tsp black pepper, fresh ground

I used this on chicken breasts and I cooked them indirect method on a weber grill, also with hickory wood chips for smoke flavoring. They were also great.


In both cases, I applied the rubs just before the grill was getting up to temperature. The cooking process took an hour at least. Low & slow is the way to go I always say. Low as in low temperature, and slow as in take your time and don't rush.

The Beast

Here's a picture of my little beast cat, Lexus. She's practicing her favorite hobby.

She's supposed to be a vicious, bloodthirsty predator, but...

I dunno...

Sweet dreams.

Lexus

Just ONE MORE RACE JIMMY!!!!!

Just ONE MORE RACE JIMMY!!!!! Yes, just one more race to go. If Jimmy Johnson finishes 36th or better, 37th and leading one lap or 39th and leading the most laps - CHAMPION FOR 3RD YEAR IN A ROW ! ! ! !

NASCAR - just one race left...

Some Favorite Movies/Wikipedia

Today I was browsing Wikipedia for some of my favorite movies:

Tombstone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(film)

For some reason I can't get the final ")" character to appear on the hyperlink - you will have to add it after Wikipedia says it can't find the page.


Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Kahn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wrath_of_Khan

Saving Private Ryan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Private_Ryan


Makes the movies more interesting when you read lots of details behind them.

Hello World

Hello World, how's it goin'??? This is the first post on my first blog. Yes, I know it took long enough.

I'll be posting stuff about my interests in numerous hobbies & pastimes. Some examples: barbeque stuff, food, drinks, sports, music, movies, computers/games and all the joys of owning my own home and vehicle.

I'll also mention other everyday things going on, such as this morning when I went to vote in the presidential election, had to herd a bunch of ducks out of my driveway before I could leave (damn, I didn't have my camera) and comments on current events in the news.

I'll also throw in the occasion trivia quiz, or I'll post a picture and you have to guess what it is. Here's one to start:

Try to guess what this is and in a future post I'll give the answer.