Good Morning everybody!
NFL CAMPS ARE OPENING! In just a few days Every. Damn. Team will be in camp with veterans and everything! It’s gonna fucking happen! Holy shit, holy shit another season is knocking on the goddamn door and it’s ready to kick that fucker open!
I thought we could celebrate summer camp week by grilling the fuck up! We won’t be stopping there either, nuh-uh. I’m also going to make some goddamn white chocolate macadamia nut cookies!
How ’bout that shit!?!
It feels like a party up in here!
We’ve finally arrived at grilling season and we’re getting after that fucker.
We haven’t done a grill session post in a long time and it feels like it’s high time we remedied that.
Nothing crazy fancy today. How about some barbecue chicken and burgers? Got a slight idea for them burgers too.
Ready?
We’ll get started by making a brine for the chicken.
Remember this shit?
It’s cool when I can copy and paste from my own recipes. Here’s the info for the brine. This is from a previous grilling post.
“Bring one cup of water to a boil and dump in 3 tablespoons of kosher salt to dissolve. Add some ice cubes and cold water to cool the brine down – that would be about 2 additional cups worth of liquid. Then add a couple of bay leaves, a handful of peppercorns and some crushed garlic.”
Place the chicken and the cooled off brine into a gallon zip-top bag like so.
That chicken will brine overnight in the refrigerator. Always place the brine bag in a bowl just in case of leakage. I don’t give a fuck about the brine leaking in my fridge but I’ll be goddamned if I want chicken juice up in there.
The next day get that chicken out of the fridge, let it come up to room temperature and cook it’s ass over a charcoal fire.
These were some serious big fat breastages so they’re going to take awhile. Make sure your flame isn’t too hot and is cooking evenly. I hesitate to even give you a time because there are a shitload of variables in play including ambient weather and grill temperature. These went maybe 10-12 minutes per side.
Go ahead and sauce up the chicken.
Don’t be shy with the sauce. Slather that shit up! Your choice for barbecue sauce. I went with Sweet Baby Ray’s Original sauce.
Cook until done.
When the chicken has been cooked and is resting under foil wrap in the kitchen, we’re going to make some burgers too. It is mid summer grilling season after all.
We will start by making a panade. That would be the binding agent for the burgers. A panade is simply bits of old bread with milk added to form a paste.
There was a reason why I keep chunks of my homemade bread.
Crumble this up and add in milk, or use heavy cream like I did because it’s what I had on hand. Season the panade liberally with salt and pepper.
Let the bread soak for 10 minutes or so. Then add in the hamburger meat. Two pounds today to feed 8 folks. Standard meat to fat ration of 80-20 is very much in play here.
Form the patties and season the top of the burgers.
Yes I did indeed season the outside of the burgers with Adobo Criollo, (Thanks Don T!) it was dynamite.
When all of the chicken has cooked get the burgers on next.
Slap some cheese on those things!
Obviously use whatever cheese you prefer but we went with the standard processed American cheese food for this.
I thought maybe we could kinda, sorta duplicate the Big Kahuna Burger thing we fucked around with earlier this season. Only this time on a charcoal grill.
Check this out.
Yes. Grilled pineapple. I seriously may need to do this for every grilled burger I ever make in the future. That balance with the salty juicy burger and the sweet smoky slice of pineapple. Oh HELL yes. Add some teriyaki sauce? We’ve created a goddamn star!
Grab a plate and load yourself up!
Sure it’s store bought potato salad but it was still damn good. Delicious stuff. Perfect for a gathering of the right clan. That burger was crazy juicy and cooked perfectly. The panade really allows the meat to retain a bunch of juices. Give it a try sometime.
I did mention cookies though and teased them on the lede so cookies it shall be.
I was absolutely inspired by Game Time Decision when he graciously hosted a Sunday Gravy week off for me earlier this year, I wanted to do something slightly similar but still a bit different.
So I went with white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.
This is some really good shit.
recipe inspired by Preppykitchen.com
8 oz white chocolate
1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp corn starch
¼ tsp. kosher salt
1 cup macadamia nuts chopped
We get started by breaking out the trusty stand mixer.
Dump that room temperature butter in the mixing bowl.
I find that real “room temperature butter” beats melted butter every time. It makes the next step a lot creamier.
Next get the sugar in there and “cream” the butter and sugar together with the paddle attachment of your mixer. Whip this for about 2 minutes.
These next two players will jump in the bowl now.
Yes we will measure out the vanilla and we will crack in the egg. We’re not complete fucking savages after all.
Time to get our dry ingredients together.
Get the dry ingredients into a bowl of their own and mix to combine. When the dry ingredients are blended we slowly start adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the mixing bowl. Just a bit at a time.
Continue to slowly add the dry ingredients until the dough starts to form together,
Let’s bring in our supporting cast. Macadamia nuts first.
OH! Dry roasted yet! Yes these are truly goddamn delicious on their own. Notice that I’ve bagged these.
That’s because they are still whole and we need them in pieces.
I bagged them and beat their ass with a rolling pin until they turned into pieces. Very cathartic by the way.
Next we add the nuts into the dough.
Now about the white chocolate.
Not sure how familiar you all are with Ghirardelli chocolate but it’s a legitimate fucking “thing” here in California. They’re based out of San Francisco and I’m pretty sure I went to their factory, hell I know I went to an adjacent gift shop because I bought some of their goods back for my daughters when they were much younger and I was returning from 3 weeks away on business.
Since I am most definitely not a huge fan of chocolate I have no idea how far ranging their brand is.
Just be aware that this is the very best I could find.
We don’t want to use the blender to add in the chips, so remove the mixer paddle attachment and add in the chips by hand. Gently.
Grab a sheet of the oh so familiar parchment paper and place it on a baking sheet.
Heat up the oven to 350 degrees.
Take about 1-2 tablespoons worth of dough and place each doughball on the pan. Leave a couple of inches between the balls.
Into the oven for about 10 minutes or until golden brown and goddamn delicious looking.
Since these are very monochromatic, I thought using the black plate for a bit of contrast would work.
Cook until all of the batches of dough have been cooked and the cookies are done.
Shit. I should have doubled the recipe.
It’s time like these that I actually regret my decision to stop drinking milk. I quit probably 5 or so years ago but godDAMN would a cold glass of milk be awesome with these.
For the record not a single cookie survived the onslaught. It was a massacre.
Well, guess that about wraps this one up. I’m sure everyone has been hearing about the heat wave shit going on but no need to worry. I live right on the coast for a reason. It’s been abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous the last few weeks.
Just in time for training camp!
Shit howdy, who’s ready for some gatdamn football?
WOO!
Enjoy your Sunday everyone and be sure to stop by next week. Got something pretty damn special lined up for you.
Until then.
PEACE!
About the Monty Hall problem, there are 4 cases
1) You select the correct door, host opens wrong door #1 (16.7%)
2) You select the correct door, host opens wrong door # 2 (16.7%)
3) You select wrong door #1, host opens wrong door #2 (33%)
4) You select wrong door #2, host opens wrong door #1 (33%)
When the host opens a door (say wrong door #1), you can eliminate half of those, so you’re left with
1) You selected the correct door, host opens wrong door #1 (16.7%)
or
2) You selected wrong door #2, host opens wrong door #1 (33%)
Since 33>16.7 the probability that you selected the wrong door is higher and it’s better to switch
You should do it in person in Vegas as a shell game. Wait…is that why it’s called three card Monty?
[looks it up]
No it is not. It’s actually called Three-card Monte.
Isn’t that assuming that there are two bad doors, and only one correct one? I haven’t watched that show since Monty Hall had brown hair, so I don’t remember if that’s always the case.
No idea if that’s how it is in the show, but that’s the way the problem is always stated, with one good door and two bad. I think the bad doors are supposed to have goats, but I wouldn’t mind getting a goat assuming you actually get to keep the goat and not just look at it!
Follow the lady!
Those cookies… 😛
Glad youbliked the adobo
That was so good on the burgers.
Those are some delicious looking cookies! It’s too hot in my place to bake right now, even in the toaster oven, so I’ll have to go with store-bought. Tate’s do a nicely crispy white choc and macadamia.
Until then, I ordered Mexican food, opened a bottle of wine, and am watching old Futurama in anticipation of new Futurama!
Thanks to this post, I went to Smart n Final and got a container of 18 White Chocolate and Macadamia cookies.
Well done! That’s a solid buy
?b64lines=IENvb2tpZXMhIDUwIGNlbnRzIGEKIGJveCEgR2l2ZSBtZSBhbGwgeW91cgogY2hhbmdlIQ==
I’m always happiest being a bad influence.
Do you have a balcony? We basically cooked outside the other night – rice cooker and an induction hotplate on the patio – so the heat would stay outside.
I do have a little patio, but there’s no outlets out there so I would have to keep the door open and run an extension cord. Plus most of the space is taken up with plants and a hammock
I’m purusing the archives but we got a lot now…
Need something with rice that is a big cook (roast or crock or something) that’s better like two or three days after cooking.
So if Jeeves is available here….
I’ve got something but it’s not going to post for two weeks. Let me check.
Also meat.
Got it. Search for red beans and rice. I’ve done two versions. The older one was better because the 2nd one was during the pandemic and my options were severely limited.
Speaking of probabilities, there’s a 46% chance it’s going to rain here!
It’s sprinkling where I am.
It drizzled a little here in Big Bear. It smells like rain!
I LOVE that smell!
The best is when it rains in the desert and you get that sage and creosote smell. Awesome.
Rain is the best. I have hopes for this evening, and that it won’t be that horrid cocktease “heat lightning.”
We’re overcast but no rain yet. Humid though.
/wife and I are out in the middle of the lake swimming
Me: “What grade would you give us as far as raising the kids?”
Wifey: “What? I can’t. That’s too simplistic.”
Me: “C’mon. It’s just a silly question.” [thinking, “I hope she gives us a better grade than the B-minus that I have in mind”]
Wifey: “Ok…maybe a C-plus?”
Me: “Wow. We can’t be that bad!”
/after a bit more discussion we gave ourselves a very tentative “B”
My Dad also said “fair” and when pressed “B-minus.” My Mom responded “speak for yourself, I sure hell think we did better than B-fucking-minus.”
/ie, this was a loaded question and GOOD JERB holding your fire
I’m sitting here watching The Bear with my granddaughters.
I’m giving myself a solid B+.
Y’all are perfectionists.
If they have jobs, an education, and in touch with you, that’s an A all the way.
I helpfully reminded my Mom that none of us were in prison, at least not yet.
“You’re at a lake and letting us grade our own papers?”
-P Voorhees
If you watched CBS yesterday they were showing the Sail GP event from Chicago. That is EXACTLY what’s going on here today. Right where I do my walk.
No worries, I drove down to the Maritime Museum and did my old school walk along the Vincent Thomas Bridge and by the Catalina terminal.
The fountains at the cruise shop terminal are working! First time since the pandemic.
That walk was gorgeous. They put in some exercise stations and I got some extra work in.
The ladies are coming by for dinner too.
Life is good!
Bands? Or the wood stuff with metal pull up bars?
They have a rowing machine, some push up stations and a sit up station.
A real Terrell Owens driveway…
So I was thinking about an alternate explanation for the Monty Hall problem:
Everyone agrees that your odds of picking the right door are 1/3 on your initial guess. NO ONE DENIES THIS. But the prospect of switching doors after the host opens one of the other two means you get a 2/3 chance of the new door being the correct one. This is confusing to people; who think switching doesn’t improve your odds at all.
The key to the problem is that the host knows which is the right door. So imagine if the host didn’t open a losing door before inviting you to switch – once you made your first choice, he just immediately said, “would you prefer to switch your guess to both of these doors, and if it’s behind either one, you win?” Because that’s effectively what’s happening, it’s just in a different sequence. Of course you would switch.
The real tragedy of this whole thing is that some people think of it as the Wayne Brady problem.
I thought the Wayne Brady problem was something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxG9jeZBafs
The best description I’ve seen is to do it with 100 doors. You pick one (odds that it’s correct are 1 in 100), then they show you 98 other doors. Odds that the other door is correct is 99 in 100. If they’re still stubborn, you can keep walking it back. 49 in 50, 19 in 20, 9 in 10, 3 in 4, 2 in 3.
ETA: some smart people just don’t get it. I had one coworker who I thought was a smart guy that just had a hole in his head where the Monty Hall Problem was supposed to live. Absolutely denied it.
Wouldn’t that also make the odds that your original door is correct also 99 of 100?
The issue with the solution is not the math, it’s the explanation. It’s not intuitive unless you can explain it in a way that people understand. I like the 1/3 versus 2/3 explanation where you phrase it as the choice of one door versus choosing two doors.
Opening the door means that the odds of 2/3 are transferred to the unopened door.
I don’t think this is right. Monty opens a door he KNOWS is wrong, but only AFTER you pick. That means your chances were always 1 in 3. It’s an “independent variable” type thing, I don’t know how to “show my work” to ‘splain.
But the key is he ALWAYS opens a wrong door, and ALWAYS after you pick.
So why isn’t it 50/50?
Because he ALWAYS opens one he is SURE is wrong. Nothing has really changed. It just SEEMS like it has.
Yeah i totally have that blind spot.
I guess that what makes it so fun.
Because Monty knows where everything is. The door he opens is random if you’ve picked the door with the car. However, the choice of door is deliberate if you picked a goat.
This fact changes the odds. If it was truly random, it would be 50-50. The fact that it’s not random shifts the odds.
Does that mean that 2 of the 3 doors are always bad? Then doesn’t that mean that only 1 out of 3 is good, and your odds are always 1 in 3, whether you pick once or twice? Never mind, my brain hurts.
yes, since you don’t know if pick 1 was good or bad, and Monty’s reveal was not random.
So i always change my pick after they show me what’s behind the first loser door?
That’s the idea. No guarantee you’ll win, of course, but you have better odds of winning.
How fucking old am I? When I was in college (even the freshman dorm), I always had a newspaper subscription.
We had individual mailboxes. I’m not sure I checked mine more than once a month. One kid in my dorm was in a junk mail war dating back to high school and he’d get boxes of the stuff every week.
I probably checked mine twice a day. Was always a weird fucking kid.
Now, I’m on once a week at most. THANKS #NuAIDS!!!
The old part comes in when you say you read the paper.
I read it right up until the day they quit carrying boxscores. So probably 2005-ish?
I’m sorry, Yeah Right, but I checked out right after reading ‘white chocolate’; it’s simply an unholy abomination that cannot be encouraged to continue, and that’s a hill I’ll die on.
– J Jones, Purist
So harsh. I mean, he didn’t have a great outside shot but he was very entertaining and he won a title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8b0XbtpFsA&ab_channel=NBA
Him and Randy Moss were on the same basketball team, in Belle WV. At the time they thought Moss was a better basketball player than football player*. How they hell they didn’t win the WV high school hoops tournament back then is a tribute to whoever won’s teamwork.
*Source: used to work with a guy who went to high school with those two. He would have been my Six Degrees of Separation contact for both the NFL and the NBA, but I’ve lost track of him.
So you’re saying if I was to hand one of these cookies to you still fresh and warm from the oven you wouldn’t try it?
Why is my bullshit detector going haywire right now?
I mean, I’m not a monster.
[crosses off another suspect’s name on the “who was under my bed last night” list] – Eli Manning
yeah right has an instant classic this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G310PL039ZY&ab_channel=ScobyJohns
“More gruel sir? Someone? Anyone? Please feed me. I beg you.”
-Unemployed Zeke Elliot
Zeke looks like a hunter- gatherer. He’ll be fine.
Ed Reed has taught him the ropes of survival on the street.
I was going to make a joke about “I’m sure he invested well…in Bitcoin!” but then I remembered that Zeke was actually a good student at OSU and probably did actually invest well. Or was at least smart enough to hire someone to invest well for him.
Now the joke’s ruined. Thanks Zeke, thanks a lot.
I wonder what he’ll do next. I’m tired of these players getting rich then just turning their money into boring old investments.
yeah, but HOW MANY bowls of lead paint chips ago was that?
My favorite cookies right here. These look well worth scratch baking.
In other news, the veggie garden is full up – gone jurassic. Everything being picked and eaten. Reduced produce purchases until October.
Fresh peperonata in the clay pot tonight.
Nice!! Well done!
I have yet to harvest anything from my garden. The tomato plants are might be more than 7′ high at this point, the pepper plants are between 2′-3′, and the corn, (which shouldn’t be ready for a month anyway, is just starting to show ears.
We’ve had more than enough rain, hence the ridiculous heights, but no sun to speak of, and I suspect that’s the reason the ripe produce is so far behind. That’s my theory, anyway, but I don’t really know what I’m doing so I could just be fucking something up.
Up until last week I was thinking the same thing. Lots of rain this year and less sunshine then normal. But last week it just all started showing up. Hopefully being a tad late means the season will linger a couple weeks longer. We will see.
My wife has lettuce and tomatoes in her aerogarden. I am no expert BUT;
I think the tomatoes need to be prunded. They’re like bushes.
Why the fuck do everyone else’s tomato plants grow so absurdly gigantic compared to mine? I wonder if there’s something wrong with my soil. I know it’s not a germination problem. My seed is pure.
Speak more on Clay Potting.
COOKIES!!!
I’m pretty sure Trader Joe’s has white chocolate macadamia cookies. I’m going to go buy some.
People can dump on Family Guy all they like but there’s no denying that this was a truly inspired bit:
The sheer volume of jokes on Family Guy means some absolute groaners. I just appreciate that American Dad started pretty pure (at least as long as i had watched it).
Roger the Alien is a gem.
Great. Now I want a very cold glass of milk!
triggered
The Dutch ladies won, the USA match sould be a good one.
Yes. Milk. You gotta have milk…
Indeed
Yummy!
I picked up some raw milk yesterday bc the wife and kid are gone. When i get to Hawaii, I’m doing my own milk.