Now that we have half a cow living in our basement, we also have a whole lotta hamburger. We decided to start making a dent in that part of our freezer last night with a menu of burgers and sweet potato fries. These, however, were no ordinary members of their genus and species, my friends. These were hamburgo superious and

Many places using high-quality hamburger (inasmuch as that adjective applies) tout "no fillers," but I decided to go the opposite route--fill it up! Into my pound of grass-fed organic ground beef, I added: one egg, beaten almost past recognition; a liberal sprinkling dousing of Worchestershire Sauce, a small handfull of oats, a large handfull of shredded cheddar, a small onion finely diced, and a couple cloves of garlic similarly handled. I mixed well, oh yes I did.

Now, I have a problem with hamburger buns, and it is this: unless we're having 6 friends over for burgers, an 8-pack of buns tends to go to waste. Don't even get me started on 12-packs (or, rather, that's the problem: we just get started before mold overtakes them!). So I decided to use toasted bread. The only problem with that, of course, is that there's always so much extra bread hanging over your burger, and we didn't come here for bread, did we? We did not. This is where a flash of genius came into the kitchen. We have a big rubbermaid bread storage device. It's actually terrible for any homemade breads, because it keeps in too much moisture, creating an environment that mold loves and bread, well, doesn't. However, I took the lid of this container, which is square and just somewhat bigger than a slice of bread, and I put down some plastic wrap, and used this as a mold to create my burgers, smushing my mixture down into it good, then using the plastic wrap to wrangle the burger where I needed it.

This resulted in huge, huge burgers... just slightly larger than the toasted bread. In other words, perfect, as long as you're up for a burger that's 2/5 pound of meat plus probably enough filling to make a half pound. As it turned out, we were. These burgers were so good, I didn't even burden mine with condiments, which, after all, are what lazy cooks use to make things taste acceptable, right?

Except ketchup on sweet potato fries, which is another story entirely.

We've been making baked sweet potato fries for some years now, because they're awfully good and pretty darned healthy. We tried a new recipe last night, however, and in my opinion sweet potato fries took a giant leap forward as a result. Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up a sweet potato into fry-sized chunks. In a gallon ziplock bag, combine 1/4 c olive oil, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/4 tsp cinnamon (yes, cinnamon) and 1/4 tsp allspice (uh huh, that's right, allspice). Mix that, then put the sweet potatoes in and toss to coat with oily spicy goodness. Put aluminum foil on a cookie sheet, put fries on foil, and bake for 10 minutes. Turn them over and bake another 10 minutes. Or longer (say, another 5 minutes on one side or the other--I'll leave that to your discretion; hell, do an extra 5 on each side, see if I care). Add your favorite catsup--or don't, they're good as is as are as were. Bon apetit!

Long-time readers (and it sure seems at this point like that's the only kind that's left around here...) will remember the weekly Thursday Think 'n' Share feature that ran from late 2005 through 2007, and though it seems like a dangerous ploy at this point given how few readers I seem to have reading and commenting on a regular basis these days, I figured "what the hell?" After all, this was a really fun thing each week once upon a time, and for my part I'm at a very different place in my life now than I was then, and if I'm going to get back to daily blogging I need 1) some active readers and 2) at least one day a week half-written for me! So, let me quote myself and explain what this is all about:

This is based on a "game" that I played when I was visiting my best friend in Italy--him, his girlfriend, his Australian friend, writer, and then-publishing-partner, and his American friend and writer. It was a nice crowd; except for Gush I only knew the rest of them a little, and it was still a great game.

Or, rather Ungame. That's what it was called. It's Christian in origin and it has one or two more rules than we actually played with, but the basic premise is that questions are asked in order to provoke some thought and let the players get to know one another better. The answers can be serious and thoughtful or they can be joking and humorous. Thursday seemed like a good day since it's late enough in the week that we can all taste the weekend (and so we're all willing to procrastinate a little) but it's not Friday, so you probably haven't packed in your brain for the week yet. I'd love it if everyone would chime in with answers on this "Ungame."

A quick note on method: I own three card sets: All Ages Version, Couples Version, and Families Version, and the first time I did this, I went through one, then bought another and went through it, and then started going through the third. This time, I've mixed all the versions together. However, each set has a "Deck 1" and a "Deck 2" with the former being lighter questions and the latter being more serious. I've kept these separate so that I can easily keep a balance between the two.

Please leave your own answers in the comments section. If you'd like to use it on your own blog, feel free, though it'd be nice if you linked to me as the originator. You may--or may not--want to think about your own answers before reading mine or any comments, but of course that's up to you. Without further ado, let's get to the questions!

1. Make a statement about honesty.

Everyone pays lip service to it, but often it gets a wink and a nod. We tell people what we think they want to hear, or what we want them to hear--we flatter them and we flatter ourselves. For my part, I've always tried to be more honest than that, especially with the people who are closest to me. Dishonesty can be a social lubricant, but sometimes we need a little friction.

2. Are you quick to get angry or slow to get angry? Explain.

I'm quick to get annoyed but slow to get angry. Driving is a prime example--I'll yell/swear at someone who's driving like an idiot... but 5 seconds later I'll be over it. Real, durable anger isn't something I experience very often, and I think that's because I'm able (or at least try) to understand where other people are coming from.

3. If you could have lived at a different time in history, when would it have been?

Intellectually, there's something very appealing about the culture of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries in America or England. The Enlightenment had a grip on us, we were an extraordinarily literate society in the best senses of the word.

At the same time, it's hard to argue with the standard of living, the ready access to, well, pretty much everything, that we have availble to us here in the 21st Century and the end of the 20th Century.

Okay, your turn!

To do:

Write a To Do list

Finish Born to Run

Clean office

Compose

Make risotto and apple crisp for dinner

Dishes

Clean up and catch up with e-mails

Composting stuff

This was, more or less, my "To Do" list for the day. I did the dishes, but I kept making more and didn't keep up with all of them, so I couldn't cross it all the way off. I'd fallen behind on my e-mails, including notifications of new blog posts, and I got mostly caught up with that, but not quite, so it didn't get all the way crossed off either. I got stuff taken out to the composting bin, but since I didn't clean my office, I also didn't shred more paper to add to the heap.

The real point here though is how much I like a good "to do" list, especially now that my time is so wide open. I felt so productive this morning into the early afternoon as I checked things off my list. I probably gave up a little too early, but even without crossing off everything, just having a list helped me get more done than I think I would have otherwise.

What about you? Do you like To Do lists? Use them frequently, sometimes, or never? Anything you can add, please do!

(As a side note, I have no idea why the Amazon thing isn't working for me, but it isn't. When I search Amazon through Blog-City, nothing comes up. So I had to do this manually, and it doesn't look right at all. Beats me why.)

While doing some driving around, I listened to the audio book of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, a bit of sci fi that I've had on my shelf for some years but never got around to reading. Well, it was a fine way to pass the time.

Here we have a collision of scientific worlds. A rogue archealogist finds a pair of neanderthal bodies high in the alps... along with a homo sapiens child... which seems to be theirs. Meanwhile, a strange virus emerges from deep within our own genes, causing women to have miscarriages followed by strange immaculate conceptions... which end in horribly disfigured still births. What's going on?

Well, that's the mystery at the center of the book. The characters are a pretty good cast all in all, well written. The plot's pretty good, with some twists, although the basic "answer" to the questions seems fairly transparent and straightforward. Still, I was glad I'd read it when I was done with it. Solid read.

Okay, I know this looks funky, in that my entry title claimed to review Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts, but the cover I'm showing is for Warhost of Vastmark. But I can explain! You see, other than the title, this is what my copy looked like. From the library, I had an older edition, in hardcover, that actually combined Ships of Merior and Warhost of Vastmark into one book, called Ships of Merior (confusing enough for you?).

In any case, these two novels are the follow-up to Curse of the Mistwraith, which I read back in August, when it was being discussed on the Fantasy Book Club on Goodreads. The author, Janny Wurts, did a great job leading the discussion and talking about her writing, and after hearing her talk about the origin of the ideas for the novels, it sounded like exactly the kind of fantasy I myself would want to write, so it should be exactly what I'd want to read, right? And yet, there was something about Curse of the Mistwraith that wasn't satisfying to me, and I think a large part of it was stylistic. I felt like it got better as it went along, and combining that with what Wurts had said about her series,I decided to hang in for at least one more book.

Which inadvertantly turned out to be two books, but that was fine since it was quite good. The first book centered around half-brother princes born into an ancient feud between their family's (on their fathers' sides--they share a mother). The half-brothers end up sent through a magical gate into another world, where they hold the key to defeating a centuries-long evil that affliced the land, the Mistwraith. To do so, they must put aside their differences to combine their innate magical gifts against the Mistwraith.

I don't want to give too much away, but thanks to the titular curse, the two princes end up embroiled in a centuries-long feud. This volume continues their feud. Lysaer, the Prince of Light, is committed to his vision of justice, which demands that his half-brother Arithon die for what Lysaer perceives to be his crimes and depravity. Arithon, Master of Shadows, wants nothing to do with the feud, so he works to avoid his half-brother and his armies.

All in all, a very good story, with strong characters, some of whom are ultimately able to change and grow, while others never can.

I've mentioned before that I am a "manny" for 3-year-old twins. I find it totally fascinating--and sometimes rather funny--to watch the 3-year-old mind at work. For instance...

We were in a building today when boy-twin saw a woman going into the restroom. He asked "You have to go potty?"

Now, it's funny enough that he would ask this question, but when she said yes, I thought his response was even better: "Why????"

It's his big question at three: everything has to be justified, even things that don't need to be justified (I wonder what he'd say if, next time he tells me he has to potty, I question the why and wherefore of it?) or things that have already been explained.

It's been a while since I've posted, but a day when I've been given an extra hour by the Johnson admistration seems like the ideal time to get caught up, while the start of a new month seems like a good time to commit to the blogging habit. It's been a while since I've posted, and there are various reasons for that. Here are a few.

Lauren had a long weekend with last Friday off, so we had planned a "Babymoon"--I'm not big on the name, but it's a good idea, getting away for a last little trip before we have a baby. We got a swanky hotel in downtown Chicago relatively inexpensively on Priceline, just for Friday night. We arrived early-ish Friday and went for an hour or so at the Museum of Science and Industry (which was free that day). We had dinner at Ed Debevic's, the classic Chicago landmark. It's a fun diner type of place with "Good food, fresh service"--i.e. the wait staff is rude to you (but in a fun and funny way!). We took a bus down, but realized it would make a nice walk back to our hotel, even for the pregnant lady.

Saturday, we walked down to Milennium Park and walked around the area. Eventually, we made our way to The Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock building for our 2 p.m. reservation. Wow.

Apparently, as we returned late on Saturday, my wonderful and brilliant wife made a sharp turn over the curb at our driveway, which was neither wonderful nor beautiful, as the sidewall of one of our tires was punctured. And that's the sidewall, so it can't be patched. Did I mention that we just got four brand new tires in July? So I had to spend a few hours getting that taken care of this week--the upside was that the dealer where we took it was giving away free pumpkins. Also, the guy in parts tried to make me feel better by letting me know that since the tires were so new, there wouldn't be any problem with the different tread wear. Yeah, that's awesome.

Now, this isn't a reason why I haven't written, but we're in catch-up mode, so: Lauren and I eat lunch at the dining hall together most every day, as it's nice for me not to have to prepare two meals and it's no big deal for her to go from class to the dining hall or me to get a little dressed up to come eat with her. It's a nice chance to see each other in the middle of the day. It's also a dietary pitfall--or opportunity. The pitfall is that most of the dishes served in the hot line are fatty, meats and simple carbs, with occasionally some vegetables that don't look very good. At the same time, there is a salad bar, and I've decided to make it my opportunity. It's such a pain to keep fresh veggies at home, as they often don't get eaten and go bad on us. So every day at lunch for the last week or so I've been getting a bowl of veggies (mostly carrots, green peppers, and olives, with occasional cucumbers or fruit or other colors of peppers).

Speaking of food, we got a cow this week! That is, we got half a cow, in dinner-sized portions. I'm sure I've mentioned before the pastured chickens we got in the summer; this grass-fed beef comes from the same farm, and though we didn't actually meet our meat, we may well have seen it out in the farm's fields when we went to visit. It's meat we can support, raised humanely and given the kind of diet that cows are meant to eat. Grass-fed beef is, on the whole, leaner than corn-fed and the fat that there is has a better profile. The real thing it has going for it, though, is that it's good. At least, it is if it's prepared right, cooked slowly and not over-cooked. We can verify this on the basis of one meal, at least, as our Friday dinner (after getting the meat Thursday) was a pair of little inch-thick ribeyes, rubbed with salt, pepper, and garlic, quickly seared in a pan and then cooked for 25 minutes at 325. It was more done than I wanted it, but even at just a shade under well done, it was amazingly tasty meat. Also amazingly tasty was the apple bread pudding we made, topped with strawberry preserves.

To give you some idea of the economics of it, I'm pretty sure we put down $200 for a half, and then we ended up paying another $203 when we picked it up. You might wonder what, exactly, we got for that. In all the numbers I'm about to give, we have packages of meat that I don't have weighed, but they're basically a good meal. Each of the steaks is just the right size for two people, and the roasts are similarly small. So, here's what we have: 14 blade chuck roasts, 4 arm chuck roasts, 9 T-bone steaks, 8 sirloin steaks, 3 sirloin tips, 7 ribeyes, 4 round steaks, 5 cubed steaks, 2 swiss steaks, and 73 1-pound packs of hamburger. Oh, and a heart, neck, and oxtails. It's rather hard to figure out the cost and economy of it, since there are so many different cuts of meat. If we figure $4/lb for hamburger, that's almost $300 right there. [EDIT: Whoops. My calculations were WAY off, as the half was quite a bit more expensive than I was thinking--I didn't realize that we still owe money on it!] Granted, there are some cuts here that none of us would necessarily buy individually, but still, it seems like a good deal. More importantly, though, we feel like we're getting a quality of meat we couldn't get in stores, not only beef that's good (and judging by the steak, it was really good) but beef that we feel is more healthful for us.

The other side of this was that our 5-cu-foot upright freezer, even supplemented by our fridge's freezer, just wasn't enough space for all the meat we have (including the 6 chickens we still have), so we went to Lowe's and got a 9-cu-foot chest freezer on sale--with free delivery! So after going over there Friday evening, we had a freezer by Saturday afternoon--and it was just big enough, allowing us to turn off our other freezer (a good thing, since the door was a little big broken, even if still functional, to say nothing of saving a bit of electricity).

Speaking of meats, we also spent a good bit of our time this week making tamales. And we also got a brand new tamale steamer / stock pot: 32-quarts. Wow. Somehow I didn't realize how big that would be. We cooked up a whole chicken and a pork roast and made a ton of tamales. It took us days and days, though. Whew!

There's probably more to be said, but that's about as much as I can remember, and it's a good start toward daily blogging. I hope you've all been well while I've been gone.