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Showing posts from June, 2008

Greetings, Malvernia.com!

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Many of you who saw "The Lamb Experiment" on the Malvernia.com website have to be asking yourselves, "What was THAT all about, and where did it come from?" Well, after seeing it myself, I can't say I blame you. At the request of one Mr. Kent Hertz , and at my blessing, I'm now apparently linked in to that fine online publication from my hometown. That is to say, you're stuck with me, I guess. Consider it the 2008 version of "Grannies Have More Fun". Only I'm not a Granny. And I don't play Bridge. Crap, that's two strikes. But I digress.....While I cannot promise you timely news on any and all things Malvern, Iowa, I hope I can be of some small contribution to the overall experience. Ahhh, who am I kidding. I'm just a former native with a new "toy" at my disposal called a blog. But hopefully with Kent's help I can spare you many of the irrelevant posts that you will undoubtedly be dumber for having read, and post t

The Lamb Experiment

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F rom talking to a bunch of people, there seems to be this "love it or hate it" thing going on with eating lamb. I think it comes from our days being brought up on relatively bland cuts of chicken and pork. Face it...Momma only had so many ways to dress up chiken & pork. I can't say when I've really had lamb meat before and remembered it. I certainly haven't had a personal "Tequila moment" where I could never even look at it again. Apparently, some have. I threw out the idea of smoking some lamb to my mom for Memorial Day back home. After about 7 seconds of silence on the other end of the phone line, Ida says, "I'll get some hamburger." Now I don't count gyro meat as true lamb meat (you know those ginormous molded hunks of God-know's-what rotating on spits....Like this little guy here in NYC>>>). It's good eats, I know. I just know it's got a little of everything in it, with the occasional scrap of lamb tosse

The Agony of Becoming an Early Riser

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One of the great pleasures of life is the simple act of watching the sun rise. The range of colors and beauty can only be matched by is close relative, the sunset. There's nothing quite as exhilarating in the morning.....not even a good cup of joe. Okay, maybe a good cup of joe. Problem is, last time I checked, sunrises occur early. Like, painfully early. It seems there are currently two ways for me to wake up early and not be suffer horribly for the first half-hour. 1.) I'm leaving town and the departure time is early, or 2.) It's the weekend and I'm looking forward to some coffee and some reading material on the patio. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and blogs on the subject of becoming an early riser. As far as why many of us suck at it, the articles get into all of that. For me, when I'm tired, I go to sleep. Could be 10, 10:30, or as in last night, could be Midnight. (Damn you, Greensburg !) The goal is to be up & at'em by 4:30 AM ever

The Brisket Pizza Experiment

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This weekend I'm working on what I'll call the Lamb Experiment on the smoker, but about a month ago I had one of my proudest moments in home cuisine. We had made brisket for the weekend, but it wasn't the right cut for good barbecue. The only cut they had at this particular grocery store was suited more for corned beef, I'd say. No fat layer, small, just not right. Nevertehless, I made it, and it was pretty average. So on the drive home from work on a Monday, I was thinking about what to do for dinner. Leftover beef brisket. Okay.....now what? And then it hit me. Cooked entirely on the Traeger smoker/grill, the pizza tasted just as good as it looked. No recipe, just an idea. A good one, if I may say so.

If you're curious at all....

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Many of you probably know from various conversations or eavesdroppings that when Spring time rolls around, my attention (ADHD) shifts towards any and all things severe weather. THis has been the case for about as long as I can remember, ever since I was probably 7 or 8 years old. My first indoctrination into Reality TV was watching non-stop coverage of a severe weather outbreak, glued to the TV watching Jim Flowers (then with Channel 7 in Omaha) pointing out the peculiarities of a particular red blob on his radar screen. I daydreamed incessantly about having a TV monitor installed in the wall of our dining room, hard-wired into the bowels of the Channel 7 Weather Center, showing nothing but live radar. Flash to present day: I'm still the little kid at heart when it comes to severe weather. Only these days, when time and work provides, you'll find me within a half-day's driving distance of home, trying to find some of nature's best. As the late storm chaser Eric Nguyen s

Guy walks into a blog.....

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So I’ve been toying with this idea for a while now. With so many people drawn aimlessly to the two largest online human-mind bug zappers of the internet, namely MySpace and Facebook, it is no surprise that the concept of a blog has become intriguing. It’s not like a blog is radical new technology, but the concept of even timidly sharing even a fraction of your life (or lives, depending on who’s in the picture) across the abyss of the internet is a bit intimidating. But screw it. Sometimes you just can’t get to everyone you want to, either via email or phone, or the newest mind-draining concept, the oh-so-personal text message. While still avoiding those other online cesspools like the Plague, I think this sort of medium will fit the bill. Of course, many of you know that when it comes to interests and hobbies, the metaphor “all over the map” may not do justice. (Is “all over the map” a metaphor or a euphemism?? Let me know on that, please. Thanks in advance.) As time goes, it should be