Rocks, Stocks, and a Smoking Barrel Grill

So my wife (The Potato Queen) and I are in the midst of our annual “BIG PROJECT”. This year it involves making a dry creek bed in the back yard. It is also acting as a sort of half assed French Drain, since we have had water problems (flooded basement twice in the past three years, resulting in us losing our insurance – Thanks Evil Erie Insurance Company!). We had to dig a 92 foot long, 2 foot wide, 8 inch deep trench mostly by hand. And then we had to fill that trench with Rocks. I got Rocks. Lots and lots and lots of Rocks! Five and a half TONS of them! Big ones. Little ones. Ones the size of your head. And some smallish boulders too. We’ve been joking about building a miniature Stonehenge in our yard. Or at least a really big stone circle, like they have in Ireland all over the place. Stonehenge is right out, but there will be a stone circle. We have a little one now, but I am trying to find a good spot to build a larger one. Because I am weird, and because I love all things Irish (except Bailey’s Irish Cream – yuck!). I may build one in the park near our house too and see if anyone notices.

And speaking of Ireland….I once met a man in an Irish Pub, who stopped me and my wife and asked “So, is this yer wife then?”. To which I answered yes. He then said “Well don’t fook it up!” One of my favorite stories. I’ve fooked lots of things up, but not my marriage, thank goodness.

And speaking of fooking it up…..I had a grand scheme on how to make piles and piles of money this year. Mostly by playing Apple stock. I expected a run-up to near $500 or so early in the year, and then some profit taking to bring it back down to $475 or so, and then a run-up to $550 by mid-year, and then maybe a drop during the slow summer months to $525, and then a rush up to a price of $600 at year-end. I was going to buy on the dips and sell when it hit my benchmarks. I did NOT expect it would go from $450 or so all the way to $640 without much of a break. I sold a third of my steak around $500, and so lost out on thousands of dollars of profit. I fooked it up. So now I am re-evaluating. It has dropped back to around $610 from the high of nearly $645. I think it hits $700 around Christmas now, but it may be range-bound between $600 and $630 for a few months. But the risk is that it breaks $600. If it goes below that it might even go back down to $575 from some fear selling and profit taking. I think I dip my toes back in and buy a few shares at $605 - $608 and then wait and see how earnings season goes before the usual summer slowdown.

And speaking of summer…..I am so ready for summer! In two weeks I’ll be in Miami. Chillin’ on the beach and drinking mojitos at Larios on South Beach! Also, I love to cook out, as I may have mentioned here a time or two. I own three grills. One gas grill (which I have nearly destroyed – more about that later) one kettle grill, and one barrel smoker. The latter is my favorite. I love to put a couple racks of ribs on there and maybe some sausages and/or a pork shoulder and make enough food for the entire week. Or to feed a bunch of people. Living in Virginia means I can grill/smoke nearly all year round. I used the smoker for the first time last week. Just one rack of ribs for me and the wife. They cooked for about 5 hours and came out fantastic. I would use the smoker all the time if I could. Chicken. Ribs. Sausages. Pork shoulder. Brisket. Ducks. If I can find some good beef ribs I may try them this week.

Which brings me back to rocks, sort of. Because I also need to replace the pavers on which my grills sit. I want to pretty up that area so that it isn’t an eyesore next to the cool dry creek bed. And I’m jealous of all the cool rocks my wife has now. So I am going to pull up the plain concrete pavers that the grills sit upon and replace them with something nicer from the local quarry. The guy at the quarry is going to laugh when he sees us again so soon. We’ve been there 3 or 4 times already to order or pick up the 5.5 tons of rocks for the creek bed. 5th time’s the charm!?!

NOT Julie and Julia, but Inspired By

So Mal and I recently went to see the movie "Julie and Julia," which we both really enjoyed. My take: the Julie part was okay, although I honestly didn't find myself personally interested in the Julie character. Julia Child, on the other hand, is my personal hero: imagine, she never even started cooking until age 37! AND it turns out she was lying all these years about being a secretary in the OSS and was in fact an actual spy... Meryl Streep did an astounding job of bringing her to life, and Stanley Tucci was wonderful, as always, as her husband Paul. Theirs was truly a wonderful love story.

Anyhoo, like everyone else who saw the flick, we came out of the theater hungry and rarin' to cook. Now I have a generous collection of cookbooks, certainly more than 100, possibly close to 200; I'm honestly not sure. Inspired by the premise of the movie we just saw, Mal and I have decided that each week, one of us will select a cookbook, and the other one of us will make something from that cookbook. The recipe can be for anything--main course, appetizer, dessert--but it has to come from the selected book. Mal got first pick, and he chose The Good Home Cookbook, which we just received as a housewarming gift from our wonderful sister-in-law. This is a fun book, with very old-school, no-nonsense recipes like those from your old Better Homes and Gardens book: American Food. The special conceit, though, is that the author recruited over 1,000 home cooks from all over the country to test different versions of all these familiar recipes in order to find the best ones, which were then gathered into this volume. So no fancy-schmancy stuff, but a lot of fun nostalgia. (When's the last time you've even heard mention of a Taco Salad, much less seen a recipe for one?)

And what am I going to make? I'm not 100% decided yet. BUT there is a recipe for creating your own sourdough starter and thus your own sourdough bread that sounds very appealing. We shall see.

Jayne