Thai? Ohh my.

So last night we went to a cute little Thai/Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant last night while the kiddo was up at the skating rink for a party. I kind of have a rule I follow. If the place offer Pad Thai I get it. Pad Thai is a tasty dish from (Anyone? Anyone?) Thailand! I should say that it is one of my favorite Thai dishes when it is done right. When done right it is spicy and tasty and I love it. When done wrong it is spicy ketchup on noodles. So trying Pad Thai at a new place is always an adventure for me. I liken it to gambling for other people. So last night I rolled the dice! I crapped out unfortunately. This morning was a more literal. Seem that ketchup and sriracha hot sauce cooked, as it was, was pretty rough on the belly. This is odd as I have mixed the two plenty of time, and in much more concentrated batched with no odd effects many times before. OK too much info there but Pad Thai was Bad Thai last night.
However something really kicked in last night that I hadn't really noticed before (no not the pepper sauce!). When I go out to eat with my Bride we usually grab two separate dishes so that we can get a good sample of multiple dishes. However SHE ALWAYS gets the good dish. I have only had the nice dish ONCE! Sure you can chock it up to luck, karma, fate, or her more refined culinary choices but I attribute it to my bad mouthing of Buddha. I have made fun of that fat atheist for years and I am obviously on a blacklist somewhere. All those gold painted idols have to have some kind of receiver in them somewhere that marks me as a target for the bad dish no matter what. Paranoid you say? Ok whatever! I say paranoia is reality on a finer scale (yeah that is from the movie The Crow.the 1st one not the rotten tomato sequels).
So what do I do? Make up with the jolly old gent? Appease him with candy and flowers? !@*&% NO! Forget that! You want a piece of me FAT MAN?! Bring it on! I can handle anything this side of salmonella! I ate the local food in Iraq, Thailand, Korea and Kentucky. Bring your worst tubby.

Winter has dropped and so has the chore list

In case you missed the news winter fell on us like a brick here in the PAC NW. Here is a picture or two to show you how..nice it was. The dogs loved it! They played and frolicked and had a good old time! The kid, not kids but kid loved it as she got to stay home from school. It seems that no matter how much a kid loves school they still enjoy a good snow day or two. The Mrs. And I hated it. We missed two days of work and had to do chores around the house. Ok we didn't have to but with so many kids you have to clean up after them or risk living in a toxic waste dump. I have a long history of hating snow growing up in an area that gets snow nearly every winter. It sucks to drive in. It melts and turns into ice. It melts again and turns into water and mud, which dirties up the house. It shuts down work and interferes with my cash flow. F snow. 
ON THE UP SIDE.I did manage to get the downstairs bathroom completely painted, ceilings and all! It really needed it too as the old mustard color was just too much for my brain to process anymore and it made the room far too dark. It is now a nice (ok clean) oyster color. Oyster means really light beige in case you were wondering and it adds a lot of light and a cleaner feel to the bathroom, which was needed as that is the bathroom dominated by teenage boys! Ugh filthy creatures teenagers. Apparently I was just as bad, or so my wife tells me after a conversation with my mother. THANKS MOM!! I also managed to get a good section of the trim taped off around the house and I am now ready to paint the trim, unless my Bride decides to do it. She did the living room and it immediately cleaned the room up. It was pretty amazing how I paint walls and it looks good but when she finishes up the trim and the whole thing looks REALLY nice! This means she gets the credit for making it look amazing, it is a subsection of the International Rule of Dibs. I don't make the rules I just live by them. 
All this painting was precipitated by the window job. The seams have to be painted in the first X months or it voids the warrantee..ahhhhhh tricky huh!!!? So seams are being painted and since the window blinds are off the hard to paint areas around the window are being painted. That leads to walls getting painting. Which gets the trim being painted. Which leads to heaven knows what wlse getting painted! HAHA!! 
However in the midst of all this work and snow we discovered something really nice. The windows we just had put in do an amazing job and we are very pleased with them! I mean happy, happy, joy, joy pleased! I don't know how the energy savings vs price thing is going yet (that is always the selling point for a window company we know this because we talked to ALL of them) but I know the house feels much warmer and not a bit drafty. So let's hear it for windows! Yay windows keep that cold old white stuff at bay! 

The wonderful trouble with stuff.

So as I muse here I find that I have more aspirations than time and money! That is good because then a person is always improving and growing. It is bad because frustration can set in and cause stress. Stress is made up by the way Google the history of stress. So part of my wife’s dowry (oh I am in for it now) were her homes abroad. We are not rich, and never will be, so don’t start getting mad at the idea of multiple houses. Anyhoo. They are really cute things these village houses and last year I had a really nice time working on them, even if they needed more work than should have been needed. But I had a good time doing stuff to them. I enjoy, mostly, working on our home here too. Home ownership is new to me though. Land was considered a hazard to safe navigation for 20+ years while serving at sea, so it has taken some time to get use to the idea of land=good. However I think that now and have taken an interest in doing stuff to it that is positive. In fact so much I find myself mentally flip-flopping between houses going…”Paint here. Paint there. Bathroom remodel here. Balcony remodel there. Grass seed here. New railings there.” Etc.etc. ad nauseam because in the end this stuff costs money.
Boo hoo no kidding! The very up side to all this is that it really keeps the mind working and turning! I found that it is very good to keep me from “working for the weekend” and getting too lazy. I think we are very fortunate that we are getting along well in this economic nightmare that is happening. No we aren’t rich. We don’t have the savings that I would like to have stocked up (yes, I am a greedy miser). However we eat well, very well, as my wife is a superb cook with an imagination that astounds me not to mention the ability to coupon shop to the extent the managers at the local markets know her by sight when they have to over ride the cash register because she has saved so much. She works hard and has a job that she loves. 
You know what? Maybe we really are rich…

Infusion confusions

Ok so the title is a bit of a misnomer. The only word I could think of to rhyme with infusion was confusion. But infusions have been my latest hobby. It is where you take booze and put something in it to add flavor and fun. Now I am not a big drinker anymore. It seems I prefer a clear mind and steady temper in my dotage. I do enjoy a glass or three of absinthe on a long weekend when I am certain I have nowhere to go and plenty of time to nap, and I enjoy a nice glass of bourbon with my occasional cigar. A nice glass of beer goes well with certain meals and on warm sunny days but other than that I am tea toddling most of the time. So why would I take any interest in infusions? Well because they are fun and it is like cooking without the worry of burning stuff. Sure you can mess it up but the end product is still usually a nice change to an old classic. 
If you have read previously I made and infusion with some of the blackberries growing out back and it turned out nice. As it has aged it has a taste that my wife describes as a nice fortified wine almost. That is because of all the juice I added to it and the fact that I wanted something nice and sweet for the summer. I have already been told that next year’s batch should be much larger so that it will last the entire year. That will be a fun one and I am really looking forward to it! But that will be close to 9 months from now and far too long to wait on just one project! So I am trying other things…

The first, failed attempt was to take some Evan Williams Honey (a flavored Bourbon that was way too sweet) and cut it in half with some Jim Beam. We then added 2 vanilla beans split length wise. It was pretty much what you would expect. Too honey sweet to notice the vanilla properly. So I promptly ignored it and forgot about it. Well I remembered it last week and went to work. The taste had mellowed a bit but not enough. So I took some old clean jam jars and made smaller batches.
The first batch I cut it with more Jim Beam. Then I added both the old vanilla bean as they should be mostly depleted and added ½ of a red apple cubed up to the mix. We shall see what happened.

The second batch I cut it with more Jim Beam. I then added a cinnamon stick and ½ a red apple. The cinnamon is coming out this week.

The first third I cut it with more Jim Beam. Next I added ¾ of an apple. Just to see what the difference will be.

Then honey bourbon was a spur of the moment buy and undrinkable which surprised me as Evan Williams is a good Bourbon and a fantastic White Dog. The honey is just too much though and is actually syrupy rather than nice like Jim Beam’s Red Stag (a Black Cherry flavored Bourbon). Live and learn.


The final thing we are trying is inspired by our Sombrero Diary trip. A tamarind infused tequila. Honey found 400 grams of seeded (HA!) tamarind at the local asian store and we added ½ of it (cut up) to 750ml of Jose Cuervo Silver. It is browning up nicely after the first day. Just 6 more to go!

Infusions are like playing mad scientist and Bob the baker all at once! Next is a cherry infused grappa (which is a really un-nice local one that is brewed up state). Looking back I am amazed at how much bad booze we have. Maybe we are just too picky! Oh well, wish us luck!!

Wow...

So it has been a heck of a week. We got our new windows installed this Thursday and they are making a noticeable difference in the temperature of the house! So now we just have to keep on plugging along pay them off! Next is the bathroom remodel with little bits of household stuff to do along the way like painting, and cabinets, and STUFF! HAHAHAHAHA!! So New Years was a standard boring event, pretty much the same thing we did last year but with a change up of the random girl along the way...but it was low on drama this year so that is a good thing!! (Opps spoke too soon!)


Well this year I am hoping for good things to happen. We are looking at friends coming by and visiting from far flung parts of the country, and the world! So maybe the Mayans got it wrong (OK I know they did...I mean if they knew so much then why are they out of the human sacrifice business? Yeap I went there.) So bring on 2012 I got a positive attitude and a skip in my step! I also have a backup plan involving guns, canned food, and camping gear in case the feathered serpent decides to rear it's ugly head. As far as I am concerned that sucker is always a good kill no matter what hunting season is going on!