Julian had his first birthday yesterday. Erin and Gabe had a party for him at our house. It was a great time, especially for the birthday boy. Lots of presents, lots of great food, lots of friends. Here are a few pictures and a video.
I made one of my favorite things tonight: Chicken Enchiladas a la El Azteco. El Azteco, or “El Az” as it reverently called, is a tex-mex restaurant in East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University. When I attended MSU back in the stone age, El Az was a dingy basement restaurant on M.A.C. St., which is off of Grand River Ave., right across from the Student Union. Now, El Az is a full-fledged 2 story restaurant about a half a block from its old location that features rooftop dining and pretty much the same wonderful food that I enjoyed 30 something years ago.
They had 2 kinds of chicken enchilada. One had a red sauce, and it was okay. The other was called “chili verde” and a green and white sauce (get it? green and white? MSU?) that was hotter. That’s the one I liked. I found a recipe on the internet that is allegedly from an ex-employee of El Az. It sounded completely crazy, but when I made it, well, that was it! Here’s the recipe. It makes way too much food, so you can cut the recipe in half, or better, just freeze half of the sauce and chicken for future eating.
1. Chicken. You need a mess of chicken, like 4-5 pounds. So I used thighs because of, you know, the cheapness, and they have a lot of flavor. Boil the chicken until tender. It’s best to boil with some celery, carrots, onions, and tomato paste, but you don’t have to. When it’s done, shred it with 2 forks and put it in a bowl.
2. The sauce. Chop off the stems from 10-12 jalapenos. You can remove the seeds and pith from the peppers if you want a milder sauce, or leave them in for a hotter sauce, or remove half of them for a medium sauce. Put the peppers in a food processor and process. You need 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup. No, wait! Don’t go away. I know It sounds nuts, but work with me here. Add the 2 cans of soup to the peppers, then add a 16 ounce container of sour cream. Add 2 or 3 tablespoons or so of cumin depending on your level of cumin love, and a 1/2 cup of water. Stir.
Heat a corn tortilla in pan & flip it over so it’s soft. put in a little chicken and some shredded cheese and roll it up like a fat cigar. Put it in a baking dish. Do this many times until the pan is full. Spoon the sauce over the enchiladas and cover with grated cheese. You can put some scallions on top if you want. Then bake at 350 until the cheese starts to brown. Eat the enchiladas. Yum!
Wow! Just wow! A blocked field goal, a safety by rule, going for and getting 2 points after TD, then with game tied 31-31, a Hail Mary with 4 seconds left, and “upon further review…” I was just sitting in a chair watching the game drinking a Belgian ale, and I was exhausted! And I probably had several heart attacks.
So MSU upsets #6 Wisconsin! Last week MSU upsets Michigan. Week before that MSU upsets Ohio State. I know, next week is Nebraska, but for the Kings of October…who knows? They might just pull out another one – any given Saturday. Here are some highlights.
UPDATE: Highlights gone.
I was looking for something to watch on Netflix last night. It’s getting harder and harder. I started a couple movies, but after about 10 minutes I had to bail. They were bad. Netflix bad – a new genre of bad.
In the “New Cult Films” section, they had this documentary “The Corporation.” It had 5 stars – unheard of for anything on Netflix, it won a bunch of international awards, so I started watching. Turns out “new” means 9 years old in Netflix-speak. It was about 75 hours long, but I watched the whole thing.
The film examines and criticizes corporate business practices. It compares the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with the American Psychiatric Association’s symptoms of psychopathy right out of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
It also addresses some things you very rarely hear about in America, the “Business Plot of 1933” where General Smedley Butler exposed a plot by several large corporations against then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to take over the government & set up a fascist state; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial complex; suppression of an investigative news story about Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate television station (note to self: never, EVER drink milk unless organic); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia’s municipal water supply (that’s right, WATER!) by the Bechtel Corporation; and other corporate devilry. [UPDATE: turns out in the last couple years, most milk producers have stopped using rBGH b/c of consumer complaints, but not all, so consult the Google before purchase.]
The film features interviews with lefties such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein (who I’ve read, but never realizedhow much she looks like Meg Griffin), Michael Moore, and a few corporate CEOs who have either turned against their masters, or are in the film as foils. And lots of other people I’ve read but never seen.
It’s worth watching during one of those times when you want to feel depressed and crappy for a while. Here’s a trailer:
I was watching the Michigan-Michigan State game yesterday (28-14 MSU – heh) and during halftime was flipping though the channels and stumbled upon the Travel Channel’s “Food Wars.” The episode was “Detroit Coney Wars – American v. Lafayette.”
Although I was a big Athens fan during my misspent youth, that was simply because it was the closest. I’d be eating sooner. You understand. But American and Lafayette are the originals – a kind of Mecca for coney connoisseurs. Plus, they sell beer.
American Coney Island opened in downtown Detroit in 1917, by Greek immigrant Gust Keros. Keros and his brother got into an argument quite soon after and split their restaurant into two parts–the present day Lafayette and American Coney Islands, which are next door to each other. Both restaurants are still owned by the descendants of the two Keros brothers.
In the Food Wars episode, they had fans from each restaurant voting based on a blind taste test. To the credit of the fans, they all chose their preferred restaurant in the blind taste test, even though the coneys each restaurant serves are almost identical. The tie was broken by a food writer from one of the newspapers who voted for American.
I hate them and I must stop watching. Let’s talk about something else.
I don’t know if you noticed the amazing awesomeness of my weather widget on the News page or not, but you should. The cool thing about it is that it figures out where you are based on your IP address, and displays the weather for that city. I know! I’ll give you a minute to let the awesomeness of that sink in. If it can’t figure out where you are, it displays the weather for Rehoboth Beach. Why not?
Tigers just retired the inning. I’ll watch them bat, I guess.
Okay, so the Tigers are down 0-2 against the Texas Rangers. What a stupid name, “Rangers.” But I digress…
The Lions however, played its first game in over 10 years on Monday Night Football last night and beat da Bears 24-13 in front of the largest crowd ever at Ford Field. The crowd was so loud that the Bears had a record number of false start penalties because they just couldn’t hear the count.
The Lions are 5-0 for the first time since 1956. I was 5. Who are these guys and what have they done with my Lions? Where is Wayne Fontes and his hideous yet hilarious play calling? Speaking of that era, Barry Sanders was co-captain for the team last night and he did a voice over for the Monday Night Football intro – so much better than than that Confederate wingnut bonehead Hank Williams Jr. Glad he’s off my TeeVee.
Calvin Johnson had a 73 yard TD reception; Jahvid Best had an 88 yard TD run; Brandon Pettigrew had an 18 yard TD reception. Detroit’s defense was all over Jay Cutler all night. It was a great game marred only by too much passing & not enough running.
Here’s a link to video highlights because the NFL won’t let anyone embed its precious, precious video.
Wow! What a gorgeous day! Frannie & I finally got down to the beach about 4:30 in the afternoon. There were quite a few people still hanging out on the beach – more than I’d normally see in the summer at 4:30. The picture above was taken as Frannie & I walked toward the beach from Maryland Ave. The shadow is the Boardwalk Plaza hotel.
Even at 4:30 it was in the high 70’s and there were plenty of of kids swimming in the warm water.
Most of the people were clustered around Rehoboth Ave. This picture is up the beach in the other direction toward the north where there were fewer people, and several kites…that look much tinier in this picture than I remember.
Here are a couple pics of the aftermath of the yard sale we had today. This is the the stuff no one wanted. Unwanted junk. So sad. Gabe and Erin were the driving force behind this, and by Gabe and Erin, I mean of course, Erin. It went very well. They made over $200. But as you can see from the pics, the pink Snuggy did not sell. I’m shocked! Amanda sold some clothes and odds and ends including her old stereo. Brenda, Gabe, Erin, and Amanda were at it all day, and did a good job – most successful yard sale I’ve ever been involved in. While they shmoozed with the customers, I installed a new alternator in my truck. And by “installed a new alternator in my truck” I mean of course “yelled at my truck.”
The Wall Street protests in NYC have been getting bigger and bigger, resulting in hundreds of arrests, and are now moving to other cities. Yet The news seems to be having trouble explaining what the protest is all about. All I’ve been seeing on my TeeVee are clips of idiots walking around pretending to be zombies, and inarticualte trippy people saying nothing and engaging in performance art. It’s almost as if the news media wants people to think these protests are stupid… And of course, it allows them to engage in their favorite activity: punching hippies.
Comapare this to the coverage of the Tea Party when they first started. Fox News actually sponsored many of the Tea Party events and flogged them endlessly on TV pretending that were the spontanious outpouring of views from “The People,” when in fact, they were astroturf, bought and paid for by plutocrats/corporations/those-who-actually-own-America. And, what the Tea Party politicians are proposing would result in the rich getting richer and the middle class getting poorer – just a coincidence, I’m sure…
Here’s a cell-phone capture of a Fox News interview with an “Occupy Wall Street” protestor. The interview never aired because the person being interviewed actually had something to say. And that just doesn’t fit the mold.