Applelicious

This weekend has been an applelicious weekend! Today, Julie and I went to the Michigan Apple Festival to pick some apples, grab some donuts, guzzle cider, and savor an apple dumpling with ice cream. We then passed out on the couch/la-z boy. We picked some Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Macoum, and Jonagolds. I think if I were alive prior to the industrial revolution, I would have been an apple picker. I think it would be the funnest job ever - hunting for apples and reaching way up to get them.

What also made this an applelicious weekend is that Julie and I drove out to Grand Rapids last night. Grand Rapids is not only the home of Gerald Ford, but also the home of our closest Apple store. For my birthday, Julie bought me a 4GB iPhone! Best present evar!

I’m just amazed how Apple came into a pretty well-established industry and totally showed up the competition. The phone is so intuitive and feature-rich. It also worked out nicely because Julie had lost her cell phone a while ago. While I had bought a pay-as-you-go phone (and swapped out the SIM card with her AT&T card) as a cheap replacement, it just wasn’t doing the trick. So now she can use my old Samsung phone.

The More, the Merrier!

Julie and I successfully hosted six, count ‘em, SIX guests in our new house this weekend - friends from Chi-town.  We had a merry time discussing deep philosophical issues, playing Croquet (which I believe is the next Kickball or Bocce), grilling, eating MSU Dairy Store ice cream, and touring The D.  One from our group of friends works with a guy from Iraq whose family moved to Dearborn, home of the largest concentration of Arabs in North America.  After seeing downtown Detroit (didn’t take long) we headed to Arab central.  An iPhone and my yesterday’s-tech cell phone guided us to Arab Kabob.  I felt a bit out of place being in a group of the only white people in the cozy diner where all of the signs were written in Arabic and an Arabic soccer channel played on the TV.  Our choices on the menu were chicken or “meat” kabob, tekka, and chicken hearts or livers.  I went with the “meat tekka” and enjoyed it thoroughly.  In Arabic, their word for “meat” is the same for “beef” so what I had was cubed beef served with salad, rice, pickled turnips, and plenty of bread.   I also realized that I’ve only bought one album printed in 2007.  I’m falling way behind!  Time to start exploring artists again, now that I have plenty of solitary downtime with Julie at class in the evenings :( 

West to Holland

In my last post, I was praising the wonderful Michigan Flyer bus for its offerings of great comfort while taking me to the Detroit Airport. Getting to the airport was a breeze. However, getting home proved to be a bit difficult. My plane was scheduled to arrive in Detroit at 7:30pm on Sunday and I was to catch the last bus back to Lansing at 9:20. However, with the edge of a hurricane over Virginia and a storm system over Detroit, my plane didn’t leave Washington DC until 7:30. At that point, I figured I’d have just enough time to get off the plane and run to the bus. When the plane landed and we were approaching the gate at 9:15, I had high hopes. I called the bus company and had them wait an extra 5 minutes for me. But then, as we were nearing the terminal, the plane turned around and parked a few hundred feet away. The pilot told us that because lightning had been sighted, the ground crews weren’t allowed to get to our plane and let us off! We waited until 9:20 and finally got into the gate. By then it was too late. The bus company refused to wait any longer and I was left to find my own way home.

I started asking all kinds of people at the airport if they were headed for Lansing so I could hitch a ride. Unfortunately, either nobody ever goes to Lansing, or no one was willing to give a strange guy at the airport a ride home. I got online and looked at how much a rental car was ($90) and headed for the rental agency. A taxi driver approached me and asked if I needed a ride. I said, “yeah, how much to get to Lansing?” He said it would be $230. I kindly refused and he said, “well how much would you be willing to pay,” and I said, “well, I can rent a car for $90,” and the driver quickly motioned to the rental bus stop and moved on to another potential customer. I ended up renting a Saturn Ion and began the long drive home. The next day after work, I dropped the rental car off at the Lansing airport and took a couple of buses back to East Lansing to get my car. What an ordeal! I still can’t believe that the bus wouldn’t wait maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

Next weekend I will take my last flight out of the Detroit airport, for at least a while. I’ll take the bus because I won’t have to worry about flying back into Detroit. I’m flying into Reagan and we will pack up and drive a U-Haul back to Lansing! This Sunday, Julie is flying into Detroit and on Monday we are closing on the house! I’m so ready to move out of my smelly, dirty bachelor pad. I’m still convinced it was worth the cheap rent, though

Today was my first Saturday spent in Lansing. Every other weekend I’ve spent in Illinois or back in Virginia. This was the first weekend in a long time, too, where I’ve been able to sleep in and not do anything when I wake up. It was refreshing. Every other weekend I’ve had some kind of engagement or work to do. This afternoon, I went to my parents’ old friends’ son’s graduation party. Yeah, it was awkward with no one there that I knew, except the family. I made some conversation with an older couple, and it was still enjoyable to chat a bit with some friends. I had a roasted pork dinner, too. My hopes weren’t high for it because I had heard earlier (when I had visited the family a few weeks ago) that the pig was going to be cooked with gas. Roasting a pig with GAS?! Yikes! What’s the point? Well, I tried it and it was OK. It was certainly tender and juicy, but it was missing the flavor. Sure, you can slop on some BBQ sauce, but the meat should stand on its own. Instead, it was bland and the crisped skin tasted like burning, not the good, wood flavor of real BBQ. Plus, with all the special breeding they do with pigs now days to make it more lean, there’s no good pork flavor, either.

After the party, I thought about what to do next. Nothing came to mind, so I pulled out my US road atlas and looked to Western Michigan. I would take a road trip to Holland! I drove a little over an hour and reached Zeeland township and then headed into downtown Holland. Being in Dutch country, I half expected to see a plethora of windmills and tulips, but I was disappointed. However, downtown Holland is very nice. They have a lively shopping district reminiscent (to me) of Annapolis or Fredericksburg. Lining Lake Macatawa were several glorious mansions. Detroit, Flint, and Lansing neighborhoods may be suffering, but Holland is doing very well. I passed by the H. J. Heinz plant, and I was sure I could smell Ketchup in the air. On my map, I had seen a marker for Saugatuck State Park, but there was nothing on the map showing me how to get there. I decided to wing it, because I wanted to see the beaches of Lake Michigan. I had been to the beaches of Ogden Dunes in Gary, Indiana, but I was disappointed by the fact that my view was spoiled by the surrounding steel mills (still worth seeing, though - a nice break from my trip back to Lansing from Champaign a couple weeks ago).

Getting to the beaches in Indiana was difficult because most of the shoreline was occupied by private developments and access was obtained via a confusing mess of roads. This adventure was equally difficult. I followed the afternoon sun west as far as I could and headed south when forced to a dead end. Eventually, I reached the park entrance and parked near the Felt Mansion. The mansion was built by the man who patented the comptometer, an early adding machine. I wandered around the grounds for a bit, trying to figure out how to get to the beach. I followed a dirt trail past an abandoned building and saw several people walking toward me wearing beach clothing. I knew I was on the right track. I followed the path over some large, wooded sand dunes. On the other side, I came to the lake shore. It was very pretty - white sand, calm water, and hardly any people. In the summer, this would rival the Gulf Coast! I waded in the water, walked along the shore, and took some pictures with my Nikon FG20 inherited from my dad. As I walked through the sand, it squeaked! I remembered that the dunes were “singing sand dunes.” Sweet! I headed back to my car and headed back to Holland.

On my way into Holland, i had seen a couple of guys selling BBQ Chicken next to a gas station. They had a couple of large, barrel grills set up next to a wooden shack. Hungry, I decided to give it a whirl. I bought a bottle of Faygo “Rock & Rye” pop at the gas station and headed over to the BBQ shack. I bought a quarter chicken dinner and talked to the owner. He says he was selling Texas style BBQ chicken. I asked him what kind of wood he used and he says he uses mesquite and brings up bundles of the wood from Texas every year. With my food, I headed to a park in Holland I had passed back in Holland. I sat at a picnic table overlooking Lake Macatawa and ate. The chicken was pretty good, but what caught my attention was the sauce. It was almost like sweet and sour sauce and was very tangy. It was different, but good. The chicken hadn’t acquired much smoke flavor, but it was good. With mesquite, I don’t think you want too much of the smoke, since it tends to turn acrid. I then headed home on a full stomach.

On my way home, I was listening to Sufjan Steven’s Michigan album. I heard these lyrics:
I always knew you
In your mothers arms
I have called your name
I have an idea
Placed in your mind
To be a better man
Ive made a crown for you
Put it in your room
And when the bride groom comes
There will be noise
There will be glad
And a perfect bed

I thought about the recent passing of Dave Cho, a pastor at my “old” church and the recent illness of my grandfather. I also thought about how anxious I am to see my wife and move into our new house. I thought about how exciting it will be to finally see Jesus! I thought about our current situation as humans on earth, and how everyone (including God) is anxiously awaiting the day when we finally meet God and how much rejoicing there will be. I thought about how excited I used to get at concerts, finally seeing great artists in person and the feeling I would get of pure joy and excitement. I thought about all the weekends when I see Julie at the airport after being gone for a week and how absolutely wonderful it is to see her after being so long apart. I thought about our engagement and the excitement I had about being married and sharing a home together. I really hadn’t thought about God that way in a long time. It really will be more amazing than all of those experiences combined. I’m so excited! It’ll be the greatest homecoming ever! It’s going to be flippin’ sweet!

Grilling and Pot Roast

It all began in college. My roomies and I would fire up the grill on our deck (shhhh, don’t tell the fire marshall!) and cook up some steaks. Grilling was great because it was a quick and easy way to cook dinner.

When I dated Julie, I learned that she LOVED grilled food. I considered myself fortunate to be somewhat experienced in the ways of the grill. On top of that, my father in law is a grill master and I have gleaned much wisdom from him. Over the past year and a half, I have grown to enjoy grilling. It really is satisfying to lite a fire and cook meat to perfection. The taste of meat and vegetables cooked over burning wood is leaps and bounds above a sauteed chicken breast or a broiled hunk of beef. It really makes home cooked meals worth it and allows us to avoid eating out and save money. Plus, it’s just plain manly.

To really enjoy grilling, I have discovered the following principles:

1. Charcoal-cooked food and smoked meat is the best. No propane or propane accessories for me! Gas doesn’t impart any flavor and it’s too much like cheating. Besides, how is a gas grill much different than a broiler?
2. A good grill makes a difference. I’m happy with my 27″ Weber. It has a detatchable ash catcher, so cleanup is a breeze.
3. It’s best to use an electric starter iron or a charcoal chimney. At first I used the starter iron, but I found it difficult to evenly light the briquettes and the time required to get a good fire was too much. I ended up getting a chimney starter. In 10 minutes, I have blazing hot coals. No outlet required, just some paper and a match.
4. Lump hardwood charcoal (the strips of wood, not the pressed briquettes) is very handy because it lights fast and gets very hot. A little bit goes a long way.
5. On the flip side, hardwood charcoal makes temperature regulation difficult. It’s really just great for direct, fast grilling for steaks, breasts, kabobs, etc.
6. You kettle grill can double as a slow-roasting barbeque or smoker! Yes, it’s true! It’s not just for grilling steaks. My father in law puts a Turkey on the grill and slow roasts it all day on Thanksgiving. The taste is amazing.
7. Slow roasting is what makes barbeque barbeque. Before I knew that, I just thought barbecue was cooked meat with sauce on it. True barbecue is cooked over low heat for hours at a time. The addition of smoke leaves a “smoke ring” in the meat and gives it that extra special flavor. The sauce is just the icing on the cake.

Today being Columbus day, I decided to put my barbeue prowess to the test and slow cook a pot roast. Pot roast on the grill?! That’s madness! Indeed, I was only able to find half-measure jobs on the web (recipes that directed the chef to pack the roast in a tin-foil bag, which would make grilling the meat completely worthless - might as well just use a crock pot). So I decided to try it myself. Worst case, I would be out $5. I did get some help. I bought a grilling book by Steve Reichlen, host of PBS show Barbeque University. In it he has a recipe for brisket. Since a brisket isn’t much different than a pot roast, I thought, the process should be the same. I would place the roast directly in a foil pan and spread the coals to the sides, leaving a gap in the middle of the grill. This would cook the meat indirectly (the meat would not be directly over the coals). The pan would act as a heat deflector and would let the roast simmer in its own pool of melted-off fat, keeping it nice and moist. Mmmmm.

Well, it turned out pretty OK. The biggest problem I had was controlling temperature. I dumped in a whole chimney’s worth of hardwood charcoal, so the grill stayed too hot for most of the cooking, even with all of the vents nearly closed. Within an hour, my 4-pound roast was already up to 160 degrees - that’s medium doneness! Throughout the cooking, I added some oak Jack Daniels wood chips (yum!) and basted the roast with a mop-sauce I whipped up ad-hocically (red wine vinegar, water, pepper, paprika, “italian seasoning”, and garlic salt). When the roast got up to 180, I killed the fire and let it sit for a few minutes. Another problem I ran into was that all of the fat that did melt ended up pooling up to the side where there was no meat. I also accidentally poked a hole in the drip pan, thus allowing the precious juices to be wasted.

The end result was a pretty tasty roast, but there was still plenty of fat that hadn’t melted off. The meat wasn’t too tough and it had about a 1mm-thick smoke ring! Mmm! The meat had a very succulent crust. Next time, I’ll try to cook with a much cooler flame. That should allow all of the fat to melt off and for a larger smoke ring to develop.

This could almost be a poor man’s brisket!

Sushi!

Last night, neither my wife nor I felt like cooking. We had to make a trip to Fair Lakes so we were trying to think of restaurants in that area. All of the standards - Don Pablo’s, Olive Garden, Red Rooster — nothing sounded good. Then it dawned on me. A new Japanese restaurant called “Ariake” was opened, literally, right next door to us.

Amir ibn al-Kastner

Sorry, I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. If my lj were a kid, I’d be arrested for neglect.

On Thursday, I leave for Florida for my second cousin’s wedding! I’ll get to golf and see family. Yay!

So, here’s a run-down on the Matt visit:

1.) I saw Ben Stein at the Watergate. I wanted to say “hi” or something, but I’m too much of a wuss

2.) I got to play some more Ferrari F355 Challenge at Dave & Buster’s. It’s the coolest racing game ever! It has a clutch and manual shifter!

3.) It was an excuse to finally try some new restaurants.

4.) I finally saw Kill Bill vols. 1 & 2. I bought the first one on DVD the night it opened, and then we saw the midnight showing of vol. 2. Very good movies! (and oh yeah, Uma is hot!)

That’s about it.

So anyway, it’s been a relatively relaxing week. Got to catch up with my local friends (finally saw Matchstick Men - was OK) and ate at a cool place with my parents. It is called the Flat Top Grill and is just across the street. If you’re in Minneapolis, you should eat at Khan’s Mongolian Barbeque - Flat Top is similar, only it tries to be trendy and upscale, whereas Khan’s is good old stir fry (with more buffet options).

I finally have my own internet connection, but I can only use one computer at a time on it, as I have no router set up. I could go home and resurrect The Beast (a crappy old computer from 1995) or I could buy a fancy new Airport Extreme base station. Hmmmm… Actually, I bet a first-generation Airport would be just as good configuration-wise. Hmmmmmmmmm….

Some ‘fads’ around here are Thai food or Pho. A bunch of Thai restaurants have sprung up. You’re not cool unless you’ve had Thai food! I’ll have to try it some time.

Pho (pronounced, “fu”) is, as far as I can tell, some kind of Vietnamese soup with a bunch of stuff in it. I suppose I could look it up….OK, it looks like Pho is basically a step above Ramen.

I have been to The Queen Bee - a Vietnamese restaurant. They had some wicked pork that tasted like beef jerky, yet very tender; amazing orange chicken; and fish that had a sesame chicken-like sauce that was also incredible.

There is a Kirspy Kreme factory not too far away. I’m awfully tempted to go one morning. From what I hear, if you go in the morning while they’re still making the donuts, they will serve you donuts straight off of the donut-making machine’s conveyor belt. They are allegedly very warm, gooey, and delicious.

All this talk about food. You’d think I’m starving, but I guess I really have nothing else to talk about. I guess that happens when all I eat is pita and hummus and soup and the occasional Stouffer’s french bread pizza.

Vegetarianism - It’s all about the sauce®

Arti was a real loser. Every job and every idea he ever had turned out wrong. He thought to himself, if I went into business for myself, maybe, just maybe I can do well. He thought and he thought, what could he do. It came to him, he would be a HIT MAN.

The next day he put a classified ad in the newspaper reading, “I am Arti, I will be your HIT MAN.  Give me a call and I will kill anyone you want rubbed out.”

Well that very day Arti receives his first call. The caller asks if it were true that Arti would indeed kill anyone and Arti assured him that was the case.

The man told Arti he wanted his wife killed. Arti said, “Fine, but how much will you pay me?”

The man replied, “$1.00.”

Arti said, “No way, bullets cost more than that.”

The man replied, “Look, take it or leave it. Many people would kill my wife for free, but I don’t want to be obligated.”

Arti thought it over and figured he could use the practice so he said, “OK, tell me about your wife, how can I find her?”

The man said, “In the produce department at Food-Mart, every day at four o’clock she is there. She wears a yellow outfit and is always complaining about something.”

Arti decides that he will go there and strangle her. At least he will save himself the cost of bullets. Sure enough, she is in the produce department of Food-Mart complaining about the fruit being either too hard or too soft.

Arti reaches behind her and chokes her. As she fall to the floor, she makes a gasp. The manager of the produce department turns around and sees what has happened and calls out. Arti lunges at the manager and chokes him.

Just as the manager falls to the floor, a lady sees what has happened and screams out. Arti grabs her chokes her and runs out of the supermarket.

He is captured a block away. What does the headline of the newspaper read?

ARTI CHOKES THREE FOR A DOLLAR AT FOOD-MART!

That’s just bad.

Anyway, tonight I boiled and ate my first flower - a big artichoke!

Background:
My sister used to date a guy, and whenever she’d eat at his house, his parents would make artichokes and serve them with a mayo/balsamic dip. She always complained about how much she hates artichokes. Last week, I went food shopping and saw some artichokes sitting on the veggie shelf. I thought, “what the ===!” and grabbed one. I went to The California Artichoke Advisory Board’s website and found out how to cook and eat them. I boiled it in some water with oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, and basil. After 30mins of boiling, I began to eat it. It’s sort of like vegetarianism’s answer to crabs — when you eat crabs (ghetto style), you grab a freshly boiled, whole crab, crack open the shell, and suck out the guts. With an artichoke, you peel off each leaf and scrape the yummy pulp off of the inside of the leaf with your teeth. You can opt to dip it in a sauce. I dipped mine in a mayo/balsamic mix. When the leaves are all gone, you eat the “cap” then scoop out the “fuzzies” and eat the bottom stem thingy. By the time I got to the heart, I was sick of mayo. All in all it was interesting, and somewhat tasty, but more of a conversational dish than anything (like crab feasts). So it lead me to an epiphany: Vegetarian foods are all about the sauce. It’s true!

Exhibit A: My artichoke — it was fine, but I got sick of the mayo sauce pretty quick. And the leaves by themselves are OK, but you can only stand so much nutty pulp. It would be nice to have a variety of sauces to dip into, keeping things lively.

Exhibit B: Gyros at the Pita Pita place in Ames — If you get a falafel pita, you can load up on all the veggies you want from the “salad bar”. But it’s all just veggies - kind of bland. But wait, there’s the sauce! Plenty of creamy, zesty sauces that liven up the veggie blandness. A pita without sauce is just wrong!

Exhibit C: I went to Minnesota with my mom last year to see my grandpa in hospital. Afterward, we went with my uncle (a vegan doctor) to a vegetarian indian restaurant, supposedly the best in Minneapolis. It was all pretty decent. They had flat pancake-like bread, plenty of falafel-type things, and wafer-thin chickpea tortilla-thingies. But, it was all really bland - unless, you guessed it, you tried all the sauces they had. For every dish, they brought out 6 different sauces.

So anyway. That’s how exciting my weekend has been. I did see Osama, a movie about Afghanistan during the Taliban rule with the Tom mentioned earlier. We were going to see a mainstream movie, but realized all the movies out now suck, so he suggested an independent theater in Fairfax. I saw that Osama was playing there, and remembered hearing it was good, so we went. It was really interesting seeing how they lived before we liberated them, how barbaric the Taliban are/were. But it ended sadly, and it was just like, “wha?” I thought the movie would end with some American jets bombing all the mean Taliban people and everyone would be happy, but no.

So, apparently I’ve turned into this crazy vegetable-eating, foreign film-watching nut case. Trust me, I still sit on my === and play video games all day! I think tomorrow I better eat a big phat steak, race my car over to the NRA’s HQ, and shoot my rifle while I drink a Nattie Ice. Yeah…