Bringing Party Favors to Hell

Just some rambling...

I was disappointed to watch the first ep of the new Ice Road Truckers season and find that neither of my faves from last season are back this year. On the other hand, it's cool that they're based out of Inuvik this time. I found myself looking for Ray and Fraser in the background, then I remembered... they're fictional. ;P I'm continually amused that IRT has been lumped into the History Channel's "American Originals" series. I suppose if you take "America" to be "North America" not "United States of America" it works.

In Top Chef news, I am absolutely disgusted that Antonia is out and squinchy-faced black-cloud Lisa is still in the running. Gah. Why her? Other than that she makes a good bad guy? ETA: Tom Colicchio explains it all. I guess that the "lucky-dog-who-keeps-skating-by-effect," in which a chef of decent, but not stellar, skills gets lucky and doesn't screw up at precisely the moment that one of their more gifted opponents does." makes sense.

I've watched the first two eps of Next Food Network Star. I am not impressed with any of them. Also, is it just me or does Lisa Garza (another odd chef named Lisa?) bear an uncanny resemblance to Sandra Bullock? (separated at birth, I tell ya!) I keep wanting tell her to step away from the spray tan... yikes! Sometimes she looks like a reverse raccoon.

My Flickers have apparently been chased out of their nest by squirrels. This bums me out muchly but there isn't anything I can do about it. Nature red in tooth and claw and all that. :( In the backyard the feeders are attracting a wide variety of pretties though. Cassin's finches, house finches, house sparrows, chickadees (mountain and black-capped), goldfinches, blue jays, black-throated sparrows, mourning doves, and once I saw a red-headed woodpecker. Oh, and there is also the usual assortment of greedy grackles. I have to move my main feeder to a hook up under the eaves every evening at sunset or the raccoons come and raid it. I could just leave it there, I suppose, but it's much harder to watch the birds there.

I tried a new recipe last night. It was supposed to be an asian pork roast cooked in the crock pot but by the time I got to the store to buy ingredients and then prepped it was too late to do it in the crock pot so instead I cubed the pork and used the sauce recipe with a few additions and just cooked it on the stove for an hour. It actually turned out quite well-- sort of a cross between teriyaki pork and curried pork-- nicely mouth-warming but not painfully spicy. I served it over rice with steamed broccoli and it was yummy! I don't want to forget the recipe so I'm posting it here ( behind the cut )

Sometimes in the morning I'm running late and haven't had time to fix coffee and toast so I stop at a local bagel place and grab a bagel and coffee. This morning, for whatever reason, they weren't open at 7:10 when I swung by (I suspect someone overslept, oops!) so I had to go elsewhere. Well, there's this Panera Bread bakery cafe on my way and I... stop. And I discovered that they make these things they call 'baked egg souffles' which are kinda like individual-sized puff-pastry cups filled with scrambled eggs and cheese. I got the spinach, cheddar cheese and bacon one and it was truly amazingly yummy. I need to learn how to make these myself. Mmmmmm.

In other news, I adore fall, it's my favorite time of year. (This is not actually news to most of you!) And it's an absolutely gorgeous fall morning, which the full moon made even more interesting. I'm putting a few mediocre cell-phone pix up ( behind the tag. )