Tag Grilling

Strike Up the Grill

Michael 8 Comments

I saw an article on one of my magazines’ weekly emails that there are only 3 weeks left to grilling season. Obviously that’s a bit of marketing hype for this month’s hard copy edition’s cover story. Three weeks from now is just a week into September and for here, and I would think most of the U. S. except perhaps some ZIP codes in Maine and Alaska, there’s a lot of good grilling weeks well beyond that. For some parts, it never stops being grilling time. (Sometimes I think this country is just too big for its own good which messes with magazine headline writers’ best intentions.) Now as far as I’m concerned, and being just north of the 40th parallel and having a covered patio, I’ll grill pretty deep into winter as long as the grill isn’t frozen shut. When we get those deep freezes and harsh winds that facilitate snow accumulating under the patio cover, I’ll put away the grill spatula.

WintergrillI think the point they wanted to make with that 3 week warning is that Labor Day is only 3 weeks away. Pools will close, fall decorations will come out of garages, wardrobes will be swapped for darker colors, and pumpkin spice everything will greet us at the entrance to every store, even Pep Boys.

I think the point that they are actually making is that just like the stores that already have their pumpkin spice everythings starting to sneak close to the entrances, the magaziners enjoy rushing the seasons. If they didn’t publish their fall cooking guides, turning leaf travel guides, or autumn splendor festivals guides by July they think some other magaziner (or horrors! an e-ziner) will beat them to it and there will go their credibility with the masses. With that there goes their summer advertising revenue projections hopefully earned from the ads for fall fashions and vacations by the sellers certain that you’ll book you flight home for Thanksgiving weekend with somebody who advertised cheap winter holiday fares in June. Arrrggghhh!!!

What I was hoping I’d find in my inbox would be a recipe on how to use up all those summer vegetables perhaps in a grilled medley since we apparently have 3 weeks of grilling season left. Unfortunately, all I found were some interesting ways to use those soon to be ripe pumpkins. I guess all the zucchini recipes were in the April editions.

 

I Got Nothing

Michael 7 Comments

When I sat down to write this post I realized that I really didn’t have an idea for this post. Not that I had one and forgot which I’ve done and have written about. Not that I had a bad idea for a post which I’ve probably had more times than not but wrote about anyway. Not that I had an idea but had written about several times already and even I knew that one more time wasn’t going to be a good idea. No, when I say I really didn’t have an idea, I really didn’t have an idea.

It’s been a decent enough week. I’ve felt well so I used some of that energy and did some shopping. Most of the time a good shopping trip will end up with fodder for a good blog post and sometimes just the act of shopping ends up blogworthy (which I’ve also already written about fairly recently). This week’s shopping was pretty much that. I went shopping. Bought a couple of shirts, some kitchen stuff, a canister of that newfangled spray on sun-screen. But it was all fairly normal. No weird sales signs, no clueless sales clerks, no inappropriately dressed fellow customers. Well, there was that one lady in the bathing suit with a cover-up masquerading as clothes. How could I tell there was a bathing suit under what outwardly appeared to be a cover-up? Maybe the dripping water that trailed her like an ill-trained puppy. But since I’ve done more than a couple of posts on fashion rules for the real world I couldn’t see putting yet another together at the expense of the nonfashionista and her screaming need for attention.

Since the last post I’ve spent a lot of time at the pool. I’ve switched from morning walk to morning swim at least on non-dialysis days for my exercise. In fact, it’s worked out quite well for me. Last summer, actually last summer, last fall, last spring, the summer before last, and so on and so one and etc. I’ve spent most of my exercise energy on walking. Also covered in several posts. But since I’ve started on dialysis I’ve been slacking on the sidewalk shuffle. If you’ve never had dialysis I’ll add in my prayers tonight that you never have to have dialysis for one of the things they don’t tell you when they stress that you’ll only spend 7% of your week on the machine is that you spend about 40% of your week recovering from that time. Walking just a mile or two the morning after dialysis isn’t just out of the question, it’s not even a question. Period. But swimming seems to be a different animal. I’ll swim a lap or two then climb out of the pool and rest in a comfy lounge chair under the morning sun. After a few minutes rest (ok, after about 20 minutes rest), it’s back in for some water calisthenics. More rest, more laps. More rest, some wading. I get exercise and a killer tan without having to stop for a rest when I’m a quarter mile from the nearest park bench. But hardly blogworthy.

And we’ve had Father’s Day. It’s the rare holiday that goes by without a mention of it by me. I’ve even invented my own holidays just to get a post idea. Maybe not invented but certainly given more weight to National Name Tag Day than even its proponents did. But everybody knows about Father’s Day. Not much I could add to it. I could talk about my gifts but they wouldn’t hold your interest as much as mine. I could talk about dinner and the fabulous glaze we came up with for the grilled salmon but then when the cook book comes would you still buy it? Or I could talk about how we narrowly escaped the severe weather than muscled its way into the festivities just as the grill was cooling. But how many weather posts can one blog present?

No, I just have to own up to up. I got nothing. So if you were expecting to find something here to pique your interest, go to the search page and plug in your desired topic. Chances are you’ll get something back. Till then, I’ll try to work on something more substantial for Thursday.

Have a great week!

 

More things that make us go “Hmm”

Michael Leave a comment

These were some of the things overheard or read over the last week that made us go hmm. 

An article released by the Washington Post discussed the rise of non-dairy milk products.  We’re not so certain you can call soy “milk” a milk product but we suppose it sounds better than “plant-based, non-dairy dairy-substitute beverage.”  Anyway, in this article, the author contends that the plant-based products are the fastest growing segment of the dairy beverage industry segment.  In two years it has doubled its market share.  If you continued to read and did a little extra research you would find out that plant-based, non-dairy dairy-substitute beverages’ market share rose from 3% to 6%, a 100% increase.  Of course it’s the fastest growing segment.  It’s the only growing segment.  Every other beverage has already been at the top for a few generations.  If dairy-cow milk products rose a modest 10%, that would make milk’s market share 104%, clearly impossible.  Anything other than milk, the cow-type, is going to be the fastest growing segment.  Hmm.

That same article postulated why the plant-based, non-dairy dairy-substitute beverage was growing at such a phenomenal rate.  Because it tastes good.  Actually it’s not the plant-based, non-dairy dairy-substitute beverage that tastes good; it’s the flavored, plant-based, non-dairy dairy-substitute beverage that tastes good.  We’re pretty certain that if you took the vanilla flavor out of the soy “milk,” it would taste much like a hot and sour soup without the hot or sour.  Hmm.

While reaching for a gallon of milk (cow-based), He of We overheard a man on his cell phone while standing in front of the creams, half-and-half, buttermilk, and other milk products at the store.  “Are you sure 8 ounces is a cup?” he was saying.  “There isn’t anything on the carton that says so.  Maybe I should get a big carton.”  A pause.  “Well if you say so, but if you run out don’t expect me to come back out here for more heavy cream just because you’re too stubborn to admit that 8 ounces might not be a cup.” Hmm.

Further on down the aisle, He was at the deli counter and asked for a half pound of Colby cheese.  The counterperson plopped some slices on the scale and it registered 0.45 pound.  “Is that close enough” asked the cheese seller or do you want me to take a slice off?”  Hmm.

In the television news there was a story about the rising cost of cooking out. Actually, it was about the rising cost of the food most of us put on the grill, that is, beef and pork. The story mentioned that the rising costs of beef and pork could increase the cost of a backyard cook out by as much as 20% from last year.   They made no mention of the relative cost of charcoal or bottled propane. They did suggest that to keep the cost of cooking out down we should consider not cooking out as much. We’re not certain because we aren’t the ones important enough to be on television, but it seems that if the cost of hamburger meat used to grill a burger outside went up, it also went up if you use it to broil that same hamburger inside. Hmm.

This one was heard on a radio commercial for vodka. It claimed that the advertised product is gluten free. Of course it is. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics advices that all distilled spirits are gluten-free. It also seems to us that if you’re really required to worry about the gluten content of anything, who would be one diagnosed with celiac disease, you’re probably not going to be drinking much vodka, with or without gluten. Hmm.

We know that you can believe everything you read on the Internet (just ask anyone who works for the Internet). We suppose that goes for TV, radio, and newspapers, too. Hmm, we’ll get back to you about supermarkets.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.