Adventures In Unhealthy Eating

The Mrs. is out of town with the Knitting Mafia this weekend, so it's me and the kids.  We (I) have decided to celebrate by eating Things That Are Exceptionally Bad For Us.

Dinner last night was hot dogs and oven fries, breakfast today was donuts.  Lunch will be at Muster Day, an open house at Camp Mabry, the National Guard base here in Austin.  Probably something grilled and/or on a stick.

Dinner tonight is chopped BBQ pork sandwiches.

Tomorrow night we're back to healthier eating choices.

Life is good.

Oh, Hey, I Have A Blog, Don't I?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my Best!Job!Evar! has made for a lot of big adjustments in life at Casa AC - especially with the decrease in time for elaborate meals and extensive food prep.  We've been eating a lot  more crock pot meals, and more quick-cooking dinners as well.  We're still avoiding the extensively processed food, which is good.

Last night was the annual Crawfish Boil in our neighborhood, which includes (natch!) lots of mudbugs, barbecued pork, brisket, homebrewed beer (not mine, but maybe next year) and a rich assortment of homemade sides.

This was my first helping.  First of many.

It's a good feel, to come together as a neighborhood like that.  A sense of community, the pleasure of sharing with my neighbors, the delicious food - they're all good for me.  This year, I bought some bread (I'd planned to bake it, but a stomach bug on my day off meant no food prep), as well as 3 bottles of my Riesling and some orange and mango-habanero mead (still not completely aged, but darn tasty nonetheless - and 15% ABV, so with a nice kick).  My Bock just got bottled, so it's still 3 weeks out from being ready to drink.  Next year, I'm going to be ready earlier, and I'll have more wine and beer ready to haul out, and probably some cheese as well.

Today is mostly recovery - I helped clean up and put away tables and chairs, and I've got some housecleaning to do, and then it's making Mozzarella, and starting a batch of Shiraz so I've got it ready for our trip to the beach in August to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

I'll be trying to get back in the swing of things here, aiming for a post a week.

So, how YOU doin'?

BBQ Sauce

As even a casual BBQ eater knows, there are a variety of sauces, rubs and dips available out there.  They originally varied geographically, but in our mobile society, you can find then everywhere.  Purists make their sauces from scratch, simmer them for hours, can them and age them.

I don't have the time for that, so I'll tell you how to make your own sauce, the way I learned.  The basic recipe I got from my father, who in turn learned it from his friend Mickey, who grew up in Tennessee.^*  I've made my own modifications, and never written it down before now.  There aren't any exact measurements, because it's not about precision, it's about taste.  I taught this recipe to a friend once, and he spent the entire time writing down everything I said, estimating "so, about a quarter cup of sugar?" and stuff like that.  I almost couldn't do it - it's like the story about how the centipede could walk just fine, until someone asked him how he coordinated his legs, and then he was thinking about it so much, he couldn't walk.


* - Correction, the recipe here is based on my father's own recipe, Mickey's recipe was mustard based.  This is what happens when you rely on your memory instead of asking questions.