Nothing beats a good old chicken sandwich…
As I sat here waiting for some code to finish running, I started thinking about how good my lunch is going to be, and yet, how simple it is... (in revision I realized how my tenses in this sentence are all over the place)
First a side comment about brown bagging it. Tara and I went to visit my aunt recently and she mentioned how all these girls where she works are always complaining about how they don't have money and all this, yet they go out to eat everyday. Her direct quote was "HAVEN'T YA HEARD OF BROWN BAGGIN' IT?"
So that has been a true inspiration to me. Only eat lunch out once a week and the Airliner has half-off Tuesdays so you can get a large deep dish pizza for like 10 bucks. It's enough for four people. I went yesterday and we had so much left over that I took it down to the ped-mall and gave it to some guy that held a sign saying "anything helps." The thing that pissed me off though was that the guy was pulling out a pack of beef jerky from his bag. I guess deep dish pizza is better than jerky but still, he at least had enough money to buy jerky. That stuff is expensive!
Anyways, long story short, the trick to brown bagging is preparation. You have to think in advance and try to prep some of the stuff for later. Monday I bought about four chicken breasts and cooked them on the George Foreman grill. So this morning I heated up a breast, slathered some mayo on some bread, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be one excellent sandwich.
As Promised…
Recall the first note i found the other day. Well, I saw this big black truck pull up in our lot as I was leaving and I saw the guy so I decided I'd talk to him "as promised." So he didn't seem too bad. I think he's had lots of notes called on him. There is one on a door downstairs (I think it's probably his door) that says something to the effect of "if there are loud noises coming from the apt, come talk to me before you call the police." Which, I GET!
So yeah, he didn't seem like that bad of a guy and all is well. I told him it's just hard to get out of spots and kinda annoying so avoiding parking there would be nice. He got a note on his truck which in all honesty was kind of the person. I have wanted to tow people who park there. Hell, it may have been from the apartment people. I'll try to click a picture of the note on his door. It's pretty great.
This is messed up.
There are some classic lines:
Guy: "You're not an American!" Host: ".... I AM an American?"
Anyways, it's worth watching and only 7 minutes long. I need to watch ABC primetime more often. Dateline always had that crazy pedo stuff on. It's hard to believe people are OK with this. I am so sheltered.
This just made me think about if I've ever let this kinda thing happen without saying anything. The only thing I can remember is that I was at Wacky Waters (waterpark just outside the Quad Cities) when I was real young and I met this guy and his brother that I hung out with all day. We went to play miniature golf and there were these guys behind us that kept hitting their ball up while we were still on the hole! Except, we started to notice that they only did it to the guy's brother, who happened to have some developmental disability, but they would NOT do it when either I or my friend were putting. His brother would make a comment back at the guys and they would just laugh at him. I got pissed for the 10 year old or whatever I was. Finally they hit their ball up on him, I stepped up on the it and hit the goddamn thing out of the park. Pain Stewart style! Of course I got kicked out of the miniature golf course but it was worth it. The guy running it was just some punk teenager who should've seen what was happening but was too busy looking at girls or something. Those guys were pricks. I think that's the closest I ever got to standing up for someone else that was being picked on for something they couldn't change.
If you don't say anything you're just as bad as the people that say something negative. Letting people think it's OK to do shitty things doesn't help anyone. Luckily I live in a town where I don't encounter that much.
Great White North Garlic Chili
Here is the first recipe I have made up on my own...
GREAT WHITE NORTH GARLIC CHILI
Ingredients
- 1-2 lbs hamburger
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 tsp group black pepper
- pinch red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp ground red pepper
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 Tbsp chili powder
- 2 cans diced tomatoes with peppers and stuff (prefer hot!)
- 2 cans chili hot beans
- 1 can northern white beans (this is what makes the title!)
Instructions
- Cook the hamburger and chop up the garlic and add it to the hamburger whenever.
- In a crock-pot put in the cans of tomatoes and beans. You can drain the tomatoes or not, but don't drain the beans, just dump them in. Save the chili hot beans cans for later.
- When almost all the hamburger is browned, add the spices and cook for a while til the kitchen smells good.
- Put the cooked hamburger and spices into the crock-pot, grease and all. Recipes that tell you to drain the grease are foolish (not based on fact).
- If it's not soupy enough, rinse the chili hot bean cans with a bit of water and dump it in for more juice.
Thanks to Tara for accidentally buying white northern beans instead of garbanzo beans. Without your purchase this chili would have been less beanie, less tasty, and less white.