Twofer Tuesday: Kimchi Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Chipotle Mayo

 

So now that I have my homemade Kimchi recipe down I've been enjoying it much more frequently than I had been before. I liked Kimchi, but the stuff I had been buying was downright ......effervescent? The brand I had bought (as recently just tossed) is actually a little carbonated because it was fermented so long.

Since I now had stuff I liked I decided I'd brush off my version of the best grilled cheese sandwich that I ever had, courtesy of a little grilled cheese shop in the Columbus OH, North Market that (IIRC) was called The Best of the Wurst.

I think there are other, more successful places with the same name, but if you're in Columbus and have the opportunity to go to the North Market.....hit this place up. I loved everything I've had there, but the Kimchi Grilled Cheese sandwich rocked my world, for more than one reason. It's great, obviously, but this sandwich introduced me to not just one knew flavor, but two. Because of this, consider this post a bit of a twofer.

The Kimchi Grilled Cheese Sandwich is pretty easy:

• Sourdough Bread
• Gruyère Cheese
• Chipotle Mayo
• Kimchi

Now the hard part for me is the cheese.....it's kind of pricey and usually only available in a small wedge, but I lucked out and found one market in town that had it not only at a decent price, but available sliced as thick as you like at the deli.

Lay down your bread, lay down some Chipotle Mayo....what, you don't have Chipotle Mayo? That's the twofer and the best DIY condiment you NEED to be making, so I'll loop around to making that at the end of this post. Anyway, Sourdough Bread & Chipotle Mayo go on first, followed by sliced Gruyère Cheese. Put those identical halves together with a little Kimchi in the middle and grill. I grill mine for about 6 minutes dry (i.e. no butter) on my George Forman grill.

Soooooo good.

OK, so this fancy Chipotle Mayo is the best stuff, but also the easiest thing to make. All you need to do is take one of those little cans of Chipotle in Adobo Sauce and toss it in your blender. Blend until smooth and add a little (like start off with a 1/2 tsp to a couple cups) to some mayo. The color should be a pinkish-orange, but go by taste. I make a small jar of Chipotle Mayo and keep it in the fridge and usually I end up having to throw out the majority of the blended Chipotle in Adobo Sauce because so little goes in the mayo.

I do consider Chipotle Mayo to be actual awesomesauce.

An Interesting New Band to Check Out...at Least Once....

I've been more than a bit busy with my other three (soon to be five) other blogs, but I needed to share this funny/cool band a friend alerted me to on Facebook.

Now I'm not a hug metal fan, but the news of a Metal-Themed Ned Flanders Band is hilarious! I can't embed the player so you'll have to hop over to check Okilly Dokilly out.

May the 4th be With You!

This is one of the funniest straight bits I've seen in a long, long time.

May the 4th be with you!

Post 1,001: Must-See Deadpool Clip

I was only half-assed watching this yesterday because the title kind of cheesed me off, but I had to re-watch it again and again.

So far I have no doubts that the Deadpool movie will be great!

Enjoy...

...and I just realized that this is post 1,001 on this blog. Wow....

51,820 New Eagle Scouts Last Year

Wow....

Just saw some stats from a Boy Scout blog about the numbers concerning the new Eagle Scouts of 2014.

Two really loomed large for me:
51,820 New Eagle Scouts
17.31 Average Age of new Eagle Scouts

When you factor in that so few Scouts actually make it to Eagle, these numbers really hit home. I love the average age because that means, at least to me, at there are so many Eagles being good role models for the younger troops. I've seen Scouts whip through the ranks to get it "done" as quickly as possible so they can go off and do other things and I'm sorry, but the path to Eagle really is more of a journey than a destination. If it wasn't then I'd truly feel sorry for all the Scout who don't make it, as if they got nothing out of their experience.

 Here is the original post.

The Crooked Fence Barrelhouse is on the "Short List"

Longtime readers, AKA Mom & Dad, OK, who am I kidding?...Those of your who check in periodically or accidentally find their way on to this blog might have read that for years it seemed me & the Mrs. had something of a "restaurant curse". We've had really bad luck at places, as-in "given out own section and forgotten about when our server went home for the night" bad luck.

SUATMM

You might not get SUATMM as it is a meme, but I've never been so inclined to use this acronym as I was today.

My love/hate relationship with Kickstarter is no secret. Yesterday it was hate and today it is love.

Today I was introduced to SYNEK. Today is the day I bemoan the fat that a) I'm poor, b) even if I had a ton of money to blow, I couldn't get my own SYNEK fast enough and finally c) I still have to find a way to get my beloved Märzen into a SYNEK bag to begin with.

I know your question is, "What the hell is SYNEK?", or at least it should be. If your first question was, "What the hell is a Märzen?" Well I know we can never be friends as you are now dead to me.



Just Shut Up and Take My Money!

Shave Like a Man

I know lately I've been posting infrequently and pretty much just funny videos. I started a new job in January that had an interesting training schedule and in the last three weeks alone I've had three different shifts.

Things are starting to settle some though, so maybe I'll get back on track.

Maybe....

At lunch today I managed to catch a glimpse of an awesome commercial that struck a chord with me. Was it funny? Yes. Was it split-my-sides funny? Nope, but I still feel like I have to share this gem:

Am I Getting Too Old for this Shit? Nope!

Courtesy of Gizmodo comes the revelation that out of all the movies I've ever seen, nothing will compare to the glory that is, or more precisely, will be, Kung Fury.

I've always been a big fan of B-Movies, but there is a fine line to walk when you making a B-Movie, especially when you know you are making a "bad" movie. I've seen plenty of movies that are awesome because they don't know they are bad and but rarer is the "good" B-Movie that is good because the people making the film knew it was bad. It is all-too rare for a cognizant group of folks to put out a bad movie worth watching.

I think the folks over at Laser Unicorn know what they are doing and are going to do a delightfully terrible job doing it. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself:



If you want to help out, this is their Kickstarter. I want to see this movie get made.

Batkid Saves the Day!

All I can say is I wish that I had the means to go to SF and simply watch this awesome spectacle unfold.

I had seen the original blog post about the "Bat Kid" and his wish for/from the Make a Wish Foundation. To see an entire community come together to make this happen.....wow.

Now if we could just get more people on the Bone Marrow Registry then maybe more kids could get their parent's wish fulfilled......




Batkid from San Francisco Chronicle on Vimeo.

Cool "New" Zombie Game Promo

Imagine my surprise when the folks over at iO9 pointed me to a Machinima video of EPIC proportions.

I have quite a few zombie video games, or games with zombies in them. I've enjoyed them all, but for some reason I just didn't really get into Dead Island. I might have to give it another go, but for now I'm content with what I have, especially since the new COD game is coming out.

Anyway, this video is a shot-for-shot remake of the original "reverse" Dead Island promo. It is a cool fan-made effort.

Cool Protest Video

To a certain extent I'm not a huge fan of protests & I'm not even sure I've ever taken place in one, but I have been tempted.

You see, the thing is I've been around far too many protests, starting back when I first went to college. If you've ever seen PCU, that movie hit kind of close to home for me. I've seen too many stupid protesters, psuedo-intellectuals, and just plain old (putting on my Red Forman pants here) dumbasses.

Awesome YouTube Commercial

It has been forever since I've laughed so hard at a commercial, which is surprising only because I'm inundated with commercials these days.

Usually I just skip by the commercials on places like YouTube, but this commercial......even at a couple of minutes, made me laugh so hard in such a juvenile way that I had to find it online and share it with all of my male friends. Most of my female friends may actually be interested in this product, but would never enjoy this video to the extent that my 12 year-old self does.

Please.....enjoy with my compliments.

Awesome Breaking Bad/Walking Dead Mashup

I was planning a different post today, but this morning I came across a most excellent video.

Not the usual funny-stuff from the folks over at College Humor, but pure awesome nonetheless.

Enjoy....

Zen Pencils

Thanks to a post from a Gawker Media Site, I managed to stumble upon Zen Pencils from Australian artist Gavin Aung Than.

Zen Pencils are interesting, often inspirational, quotes taken from a variety of sources and put to a more graphical form. Than makes a lot of his work available as print posters and even has a few free ones available as well (download & print off yourself).

There were a few Zen Pencils that I really wanted to be able to use as desktop wallpapers, which wasn't easy to manipulate because the art is often oriented vertically, which doesn't always work for my widescreen monitor.

After making a couple of wallpapers I discovered that Than already had a few fan-made wallpapers that he graciously makes available to anyone who wants it. I found that pretty cool, so I made sure to email him with the wallpapers I made:

I made these to fit my 1600 x 900 desktop, with some allowances made for my menu bar. I don't know how well Blogger handles the pictures, but this should give you a snapshot of Zen Pencils and I'm sure someday Than will make them available for download.

Chicken Fight!

Today is my 11th Wedding Anniversary and I'm not sorry to report I'm pretty much phoning this entry in today....

....mostly because I think this video is freakin awesome and unfortunately I don't have anything worthwhile to add.

Re-enactment of Peter Griffin/Giant Chicken fight from family guy.

Enough said: go here and see for yourself.

Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ

This week I've been a bit busy with a side project (a new blog for my HackMaster Campaign), but I wasn't too busy to be able to try a new restaurant with the Mrs.

In the past we've had so much bad luck with new-to-us restaurants that she though we had a curse of some type and quite frankly I wasn't willing to try out new places unless I had to. My standards of service are pretty fricken low to begin with and so many places fail miserably. It is no wonder that so many places don't make it a year.

It was with a bit of trepidation that I bypassed the familiarity of one trusted pace to try out Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ. Boise, or at least the larger metropolitan area, has a few "Hawai'ian" places. One is fake as hell, the other is more of an upscale "fusion" place (I could be wrong, but it is so out of our way I won't ever find out), and the other is just ok. The last place was this new place on State Street (3912 W State Street to be exact).

We parked out back and walked in the back entrance, something that I was advised never to do. It is generally good advice to avoid the back of a restaurant if you want to keep your appetite. This was a notable exception. I don't know if the aromas were coming from their cookers or the smokehouse next door and frankly I didn't care. I just wanted to jam some smoked meat in my face hole now.

At first glance I think a lot of people would think that the Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ was a little "divey". The seating was cheaper outdoor patio furniture and people were eating out of styrofoam take-out containers using plastic utensils and paper cups. If this turns people off it must suck to be them because they either never went on vacation to Hawaii or they stayed in some super stuck-up place when they did. Between the decor and the soft Hawai'ian music playing in the background (actually in the kitchen area) it was a step back to my vacation.

The food was typical local Hawai'ian fare, or it sure as hell seemed that way to me. When we went on vacation we really tried to eat at local places and stayed away from touristy restaurants whenever possible. The food was so much better when it was made without the pretentious drapings and visitor sensibilities. I'm not going to delve too deep into the food, but I will say this: after our first bite the wife and I started planning on when we'd be able to come back for our second visit.

Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ is obviously a family affair and a labor of love. The couple that own the place were in the kitchen singing along to their music, enjoying what they were doing while stealing the occasional kiss. It was a busy Saturday night maybe a half-hour before close and it seemed they

were having the time of their life.

For the brief times we've been eating there we really did enter into our own Island Time Zone.......

At the risk of you getting there before I do and eating the last of the pulled pork, I have to urge you tomake the trip and check it out for yourself.

They are open Tuesday-Saturday 11-8 and I don't recommend looking at their online menu until you are prepared to drive over. We made the mistake of trying to go over at 8:30 PM Friday night and you really don't want to experience that disappointment if you can avoid it.

Sriracha-Style Hot Pepper Sauce

It many respects it is way too early to be thinking ahead to Christmas, but many of the food presents I'm planning on this year take a LOT of time.

I'll be putting up some of the projects here, spoilers-be-damned, and while I cannot put finished pictures up yet, I want to start with some homemade "Sriracha" sauce...AKA "Rooster" or, in the case of some of our friends, "Cock" sauce.

Before anyone takes offense, the most popular brand of Sririacha Sauce is made by Huy Fong Foods in LA. The label is in English and Thai, but everybody knows it by the big rooster on the front.

I did a lot of researching on the various different recipes that are out there and settled on coming up with my own version, which is a modification of Andrea Nguyen's recipe found on her blog Viet World Kitchen. I made a couple big changes, one of which I'm going to keep secret, but the recipe is otherwise quite close to the original.  If you want to make a small batch, you should just follow her recipe. Mine makes considerably more sauce.....by my reckoning 1 1/2 gallons. To make things easier I did break this down into smaller batches.

Sriracha-Style Hot Pepper Sauce
1 pound Habanero Peppers
11 pounds Bell Peppers
24 cloves Garlic
6 tablespoons & 2 teaspoons salt
1 cup brown sugar
4 cups vinegar
4 Sheets Nori

#2 Because the #1 attempt was terrible!

The instructions in a nutshell: finely chop everything except the vinegar (use a food processor), ferment for 3-4 days in glass jars, simmer for five minutes with the vinegar, cool, blend like hell, sieve, store.

I have obtained some awesome sauce bottles that will let me basically water-bath can the sauce into
appropriate bottles. When I get them put up I'll have to append this post. Until then, I want to share with you the label I made for the bottles. It took me a while to come up with the name and the general idea. I think my recipients will get it.

2013.07.07 Edit
I bottled it up last night, cleaned off the bottles and put on the shrink-wrap tops. I had 1/2 of a bottle left over. While still a bit hot for my everyday use, I mixed some with ketchup and it was great.

Shared 2013.07.08

Cool Google Easter Egg

Sometimes you find the coolest surprises when you least expect it.

Google likes to make special banners to celebrate anniversaries, and they've been known to make some pretty interesting in-browser experiences. I've seen games, walking directions to Mordor, and quite a few odds and ends over the years.

Today I was told about this interesting Google search. Starting with a simple Google search, in this case I risked the interwebs imploding by Googling "Google", just to see the results. Nothing special.

Now compare this to a Google Search for GLAAD:

The Deadpool Game Rocks!

For my recent birthday Carolyn got me the new Deadpool game.

If you are a fan of Deadpool and are even thinking about trying out the game, run...don't walk...to your nearest retailer and pick it up.

I'm barely into it and I was pretty much sold before playing the first mission. The folks at High Moon Studios captured Deadpool perfectly.

My wife's first comment about the game was, "There sure are a lot of warnings on there." Hmm...let's check...

Well, it looks like they forgot a few things. I think I can make the needed changes:

Much better....and sounds about right. I'm giving this game a definite two thumbs up! Extremely
awesome birthday gift. I think that High Moon Studios has to be involved in any Deadpool movie in the pipeline because they seem to understand the character better than what we've had so far.