I doubt my presence has been missed much over the past few weeks, as my co-bloggers have certainly kept you amused, informed, and wrily exasperated as usual. Ms. YAFB and I have been on not one, but two holidays this July, after a couple of years when we barely managed any—the first to the wedding of a family friend in wildest Sweden, and the second a week’s voyage on the T.S. Royalist, which some of you may recall from a post of mine from a couple of years ago. I won’t subject you to the full Vogon poetry session of endless holiday snaps, but I’ll share a few, and in return hope that you’ll help me get up to speed with what’s going on in the world—I’ve been without radio and TV for most of the month, let alone access to the blogosphere. You can assume I know about the Norwegian massacre, Amy Winehouse’s untimely death, and the still-grinding budget process, but as for the rest, I have a power of reading to catch up with—not least from this blog!
If you don’t dig on swine or have cholesterol issues, kindly avert your eyes from the above photo and do not read this recipe. These pork chops are fried—so help me god!—in a combination of bacon grease and Crisco.
Fry a pound of bacon in a large skillet for breakfast. Save the grease. Add a dollop or two of Crisco to achieve a fat-depth in the skillet of about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch (depending on the thickness of your chops—the grease should be deep enough so they’ll be half submerged). Heat to medium-high.
Place dry ingredients in paper bag. Rinse chops in water, place ‘em in the bag and shake vigorously. Add coated chops to skillet and fry until golden brown on both sides.
While the chops are frying, dump the flour mixture into the trash and flatten the paper bag to serve as a grease-draining platform for the chops once they’re cooked.
Serve with whatever fixings you like. These chops were consumed with steamed fresh green beans tossed with a little Italian dressing.
PS: This sort of cooking earned me my nickname—and subsequent internet pseudonym—from my elitist New Yorker husband.
Way too hot for Usquaebach or Patrón Reposado, and beer wicks off your skin faster than Witch Hazel. However, a fistful of this and a couple of fingers of Looza Banana Nectar will make politics seem edgy and interesting all over again.
Given that he stole the recipe for mac & cheese from the Italians, Declaration Boy has a lot of nerve busting this woman’s balls for heating up a plastic pouch she bought at Piggly Wiggly.
On the other hand, if he’d kicked her ass for serving shitty synthetic food-wads to her holiday guests when she lives in a million-dollar fenced McMansion, I could get down with that.
“Authentic” Jefferson mac & cheese video recipe is below the fold.
Like all holidays, the 4th of July is an obligatory, bullshit celebration that will inevitably force you to share oxygen with pin-headed Wingnut primates you can’t legally kill and who refuse to leave because they drove all the way from Bumfuck, Idaho in their mint-restored ‘71 HemiCuda but are too cheap to spring for a room at the Super 8. Now, however, you can whip up a simple, appealing Third Party Spoiler that’s guaranteed to plunge them into a self-annihilating ideological null-space you can fill with any room-temperature Democrat who’s not currently under indictment.
You will need the following ingredients:
♦ 8 cups baking soda
♦ 45 egg whites (Separate non-white portions and mail any fetal chicks to Liberty University for proper, reverent disposal and mourning.)
♦ 1 cup Mother Moose’s® Permanent Fund Dividend Oil-Based Attention Shortening
♦ 1 tri-cornered hat (Pulled or minced.)
♦ 1 Gadsden Flag (Snake bits only. Trim them out of the yellow field, and save the excess fabric to make patriotic ammo-cozies.)
♦ 1 pocket version of the US Constitution (with the 16th Amendment and Commerce Clause carefully stripped out, and the remainder vigorously whisked until only the 2nd and 10th Amendments remain floating on top of the foam.)
♦ 1 GRUCCI MINESHELL MAYHEM assortment pack (or the LIVE FREE OR DIE® 21-Shot crackling fan buster-box or the BADA BING BADA BOOM 19-Shot destructo-sampler.)
♦ 2 tbsp. Milk of Common Sense® or other artificial education-substitute
♦ 1 tsp. Bachmann Bitters
♦ Rick Barber’s Scary Dead Presidents® Brand coarse, unseasoned, tax-free Salt of the Earth, sprinkled to taste.
Stir ingredients until the mixture resists logic and clings to God or a gun. Trowel into a flat, shallow, irony-free pan. Bake at highest available oven temperature for one minute, or until explosions, whistling and “mweep-mwow” noises become unbearable. (Refer to above video for bake-time clues and finished cake reference dimensions and sounds.) Allow 15 minutes for cake to cool and stop moaning, then drape with red-white-and-blue bunting for a rube-pleasing presentation.
Voy-la! You have a vote-splitting, RINO-killing, meal-ending taste-treat that serves 10-12 members of “We the People,” or can be grudgingly redistributed to 100+ illegal immigrants and non-producing Liberal parasites.
Where would media be without end-of-year lists to fill in while the high-priced talent parties away? Since we all seem to love ‘em and hate ‘em, I’ve gathered up a few that caught my attention this past week and lovingly share them with you.
Happy New Year from me and Mr. Gimme. May your favorite deity wish a much better year on us all.
For the uninitiated a cookie exchange is a holiday party where everybody brings a large batch of their favorite holiday cookies. The cookies are all set out on a table and when the gathering is over each guest takes home some of each kind so you end up with a nice assortment of different cookies.
Obviously we can’t reach into our computers and take cookies home (much as we’d like to!) but Dewberry and I thought this would be a great way to share recipes and give people a chance to try some new ones.
Our family favorite, by far, is iced sugar cookies. No, ours don’t look quite as good as the ones pictured above but they taste great! Any sugar cookie dough works but we’ve used Alton Brown’s the last few years with good results:
Sugar Cookies
Recipe courtesy Alton Brown
Serves:
about 3 dozen-2 1/2 inch
Ingredients
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1 tablespoon milk
* Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough
Directions
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Place butter and sugar in large bowl of electric stand mixer and beat until light in color. Add egg and milk and beat to combine. Put mixer on low speed, gradually add flour, and beat until mixture pulls away from the side of the bowl. Divide the dough in half, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Sprinkle surface where you will roll out dough with powdered sugar. Remove 1 wrapped pack of dough from refrigerator at a time, sprinkle rolling pin with powdered sugar, and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick. Move the dough around and check underneath frequently to make sure it is not sticking. If dough has warmed during rolling, place cold cookie sheet on top for 10 minutes to chill. Cut into desired shape, place at least 1-inch apart on greased baking sheet, parchment, or silicone baking mat, and bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges, rotating cookie sheet halfway through baking time. Let sit on baking sheet for 2 minutes after removal from oven and then move to complete cooling on wire rack. Serve as is or ice as desired. Store in airtight container for up to 1 week.
Now this is me speaking. Be sure to use powdered sugar and not flour for rolling out the dough - you’ll end up with heavy, not very sweet cookies otherwise. And re-roll the scraps until there’s only enough dough left to eat by itself. ;-)
For icing either make your favorite white icing recipe or do what we do which is buy the pre-made stuff in the store. Divide into several small bowls and tint with food coloring. You can mix the basic colors to make all kinds of great shades. Have plenty of sprinkles, colored sugar and small candies on hand for decorating. Admire and devour.
After last week’s tea-baggage encounter, I was asking myself for the millionth time why I live on the Redneck Riviera (aside from an accident of birth). Well, the weather only sucks for a couple of months per year for one thing.
Also, the food is good, particularly the fresh seafood. Above is a take-out box of fried shrimp with a side of cheese grits from a local roadside shack, and damn, is it good. I wish I knew the secret of their batter, but the proprietors will not divulge it. If you have any particularly good frying batter recipes, please be forthcoming in comments.
