King Condiment

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"


No! Because you’re Mustard and while you don’t compare to a summer day, you make all my days better.

I know you come from Italy and you’re first appearance was in “Apicius” in the late 4^th or early 5^th century AD, and I don’t care if you’re French, or German, or America, or whatever.  I love you’re whole extended family.

I have a habit of buying things on sale at the grocery store, if for no other reason that it was on sale.  I’m not sure I’ve ever passed up a small container of mustard on sale.  Which is why my fridge has:

And I love them all.

Ketchup on the other hand...  Well I guess it’s not all bad.

Dinner time

Sometimes food is good not just for the body, but the soul.

The rest of the meal wasn't bad either.



Adventures at Target

Matthew really, really wants an ipod touch. He has been saving his money with an iron fist, and after I don’t know how many months finally has enough to get it himself.  I truly believe that it would be a colossal waste of money.  All he would use it for would be the games, and he already has a DSi.  As he pointed out though it’s his money which is true, but I refuse to enable him in spending it this time.  Last week he got impatient, and decided to get himself a new DSi game instead.

Soo.  Last weekend we made a family trip to Target.  Oh joy!  He got a game that looked really cool.

Matthew’s modus operandi seems to be “that’s close enough”.  So when he got home and discovered that the game didn’t work with his DSi he didn’t understand.  Neither did I at first.  Then I looked at the packaging more closely, and the game was for the 3DS, not a DSi.  I asked him why he got this one, and he said:

The box said you can play it in 2D.

Matthew, 2D isn’t the same as DSi.

But the DSi is 2D, that’s close enough.

No it isn’t, with games if the box doesn’t say explicitly DSi, you can’t assume it’ll work.

Well it should.

*sigh* we’ll go back after dinner and exchange it.

So after dinner (Arby’s, cause Matthew likes anything with cheese sauce on it.) he and I head back up to Target.  So the lady working the return counter tells us it is a matter of copyright something or another as says that they won’t take it back or exchange it. 

Matthew was ready to explode.

So I got him to take a deep breath, and pointed out to the lady that I understand why they have to policy, but if she’d look at the time stamp on the receipt that she’d see that we JUST bought it.  She looked, and said “oh, well I’m not suppose to, but since you JUST got it I guess we can do an exchange...”

So we headed back to the electronics to look for another game.  Matthew didn’t understand why she had to act like she was doing us some big favor, when all she is doing is her job.  I pointed out to him that it doesn’t matter what we think, if she thinks she is doing us some great big favor, then we should treat her like she is.  He didn’t understand why until I pointed out that if we just told her to do her job, and made her mad that she’d just say no.  I don’t think he liked my explanation, but I really hope he remembers it.  So we get a different game and take it and the original back to the service counter.  Now the computer won’t accept the exchange because the new game costs less that the old game and they can’t credit my card during an exchange.  She told us to head on back and get something for $10. 

So we headed back to the electronics to find something that costs $10.  Matthew finds a set of stylus pens for the 3DS that cost $9.99.  I’m like wait a second those are for the 3DS.  He rolls his eyes and point to the package that explicitly says it’s compatible with the DS/DSi.  Yeah.  One lesson learned.  Then I pointed out that she said $10.

That’s close enough.

Until it wasn’t. So we headed back to the electronics AGAIN.  We tried to add a candy bar for the penny, but it wasn’t considered electronics by the computer so we couldn’t.  Instead of the cool styluses he ended up with a hard case that would hold 12 games. 

I think he learned that sometimes close enough isn’t good enough, now if only I can get him to actually use that game case he had to buy.

Poetry?

Everyone loves a good limerick

When done well they can be quite slick

But when I seem to try

It always goes awry

And just makes me sound like a dick

Hajime!

Just. Take. The. First. Step.

Game On!

I’ve always loved Gojira, or in English Godzilla. Ha! The spellchecker recognizes that not only is Godzilla is a word, but a proper name to be capitalized.  In any case I think I’ve seen just about every Godzilla movie that’s out there and available in America, but I digress.

What little boy hasn’t wanted to be the guy in the rubber suit that got to jump up and down on the toy buildings?

Remember this 1986 arcade game?

or this arcade game from 1991?

Well, just today I headed to the mall to wander around.  I looked into a store that has a wonderful selection of the type of games I like and guess what I saw.

The board game version! So much for lunch; I actually stopped mid-stride went in a bought it.  Why?  Well for one they got the right word "Kaiju" the other reason I’ll get to in a minute.

So a couple of years ago Jacob was looking through the DVD case because he was bored.  Yeah for little kids and boredom.  Anyway he saw the Godzilla movies and wanted to see one.  So I pulled this 1969 masterpiece.  He loved it.  Matthew however thought it was boring.  Which isn’t the word I’d use, but hey.  So I started looking to see what the newest Godzilla movie newest Godzilla movie was and got that.
 

Godzilla: Final Wars is fantastic. It’s not like some of the earlier ones that were protest movies, but well worth the time if you like the genre.  Jacob and Matthew both loved it, Jacob so much that we’ve seen it, well, enough.

So, to come full circle, you’ll notice that the Godzilla artwork on the front of the box game is really similar to the Godzilla artwork from Final Wars.  Sure enough, when I read the description on the back of the box game it is in fact based off the movie.

Drinking from a fire hose

All through school I had never felt that I had a class that offered more than I could learn.  It may have been more than I wanted or more than was interesting, but never more than I could.  At least until now. 

I’m enrolled in an evening class, twice a week for 90 minutes.  I’ve always rather been an average student in the best class than the best student in an average class.  Well, I finally got my wish and this class, for what we’re there to learn has two of the best teacher; ever.

 

On the left is Mr. Sasa (Rokudan), and the right is Mr. Shin (Kudan).

I’ve been taking Judo classes now for the better part of 6 years now, and am finally to the point where I am starting to see just how much I don’t know.  In some ways it’s exciting that I have something that will be a never ending source of learning and refinement, in other ways it makes me kind of sad knowing that even if I had the time I wouldn’t ever be able to learn everything they have to teach.

Carbonara – the home game

It certainly isn’t what an Italian from the old country would call Carbonara, and it’s not what you’d find at an Americanized Italian restaurant.  It is however healthier than what you’d get eating out, and easier than the true Italian version.  Oh, and the kids love it.

Classically Pasta alla carbonara is a spaghetti dish covered with a sauce based on eggs, cheese, bacon, and black pepper.  Somewhere along the line here in America this became a cream based sauce. I’m guessing that incorporating the eggs without scrambling them was too hard, so to give the sauce the right mouth feel, cream was used instead.

I started with American style bacon and it’s too greasy.  I though about Prosciutto but it’s too salty (and expensive).  I finally settled on Pancetta.  Pancetta doesn’t render out very much fat so you have to start it with a little olive oil.  It also takes about 30 minutes to cook up to the right crunchiness.  Instead of spaghetti I’ve also been using a prepackaged fresh three cheese tortellini.

So,

I render 3 to 6 ounces of pancetta in a tablespoon or so of olive oil.  Once it’s the right crunchiness I take the meat out and add three tablespoons of flour and whisk.  Why yes, that is in fact a roux.  Since it’s being used as a thickener I only let it cook for a few minutes.  I then slowly whisk in 2 cup whole milk and bring it back up to a boil.  Then dump the pancetta back in, and add a 10 ounces frozen baby peas and bring it back up to a boil.  Then add quarter cup grated parmesan cheese mix it up and pour it over the cooked tortellini.

OK, time for a cheese snob moment.

I’m sorry, but the stuff in the green can that’s called parmesan at the store may as well be sawdust given how flavorful it is.  I’m also not suggesting that you use Parmigiano-Reggiano either.  Parmigiano-Reggiano is great when you grate it over the top of a dish it has a distinctive look that says, and tastes of, sophistication.  Since the cheese is getting blended into a sauce I like something between the green can and reggiano, and I’ve found a domestic parmesan cheese that I think is fabulous.