I Like To Cook

I took up cooking after I became an at-home dad mostly to give myself a sense of purpose.

I always dabbled in cooking - and of course like most men I am the master of the grill - but stranded at home during nap time in the early years of my tour I took to watching The Food Network.

Watching a kid, cooking gave me something to think about during the day.

Most recipes call for some sort of prep time and time was something I had a lot of and outside of reading and television I needed to find other things to stimulate my brain during the days.

I got a few cookbooks that first Christmas (Bobby Flay and Jamie Oliver) and I was off and running. One thing my wife and I had been doing for years was to replicate delicious meals we had at restaurants. For instance, after we moved from Los Angeles to North Carolina, we had trouble finding good Thai food. So we started preparing our own pad thai and a dish called pra ram which is a red curry, spinach and chicken meal. Or cribbing appetizer ideas from my work. One thing we often serve is a seared tuna, avocado and chipotle mayo on a crispy wonton that's a popular item at one of my jobs.

The first thing I learned was that you need a cabinet stocked with various herbs and spices especially when dealing with international foods. Another thing I learned was the value of using fresh ingredients (which also spun off into using seasonal and local ingredients as well).

In recent years I've been supplementing the family finances by working part-time for several local catering companies which allows me to see first hand how dishes are prepared. I also have access to chefs whom I can ask their advice on techniques, textures and the value of presentation.

I'm pretty up to speed these days and you'll find me cooking meals probably four to five days a week.

Last week I had some pork chops but I didn't know what to do with them. I ended up braising them in a pineapple juice and Worcestershire sauce served with steamed broccoli and brown rice.

Some other dishes I made was a olive oil, lime and green beans side that I pinched out of one of my wife's Better Homes & Gardens magazines which turned out to be freakin' simple and delicious. Grilling bread is my new thing that a neighbor turned me on to this summer. Over Labor Day I grilled a loaf (sliced) of rosemary olive oil and then the next day made some sunny side up eggs and use those to top off the bread. Yum!

Fortunately, my kids are pretty adventurous eaters and will try most things I make at least once. I'm not sure if it is because many times they are part of the food prep process whether it's just going with me to the grocery store to get some essential items, helping measure or mix ingredients or maybe just seeing someone preparing food in the kitchen that makes them interested in eating the food I make.

There's still the occasional raviolis and mac & cheese in their diet but not nearly as much as some other kids I know.

Maybe one day I'll open my own place. I've toyed with the idea on and off over the years. I'm not really into trying to do the restaraunt thing per se, but maybe some sort of upscale deli.

The Sniff Test

I've recently discovered that my 4-year-old has been putting his clothes back into their respective drawers when he changes.

And all this time I thought he was putting his clothes in the laudry hamper.

I came into his room this weekend while he was getting out of his pajamas and into his clothes for the day.

When he took off his pjs he opened the pajama drawer and put them back in there.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Putting them where they belong," he said.

Of course!

I then tried to explained that only the clean pajamas go into the drawer.

"Nope," he said. "They go in there."

As he told me this he opened his t-shirt drawer and pulled out the shirt he was wearing yesterday, then reached over to the underwear drawer and pulled out his Spongebob boxers I'm sure were wore yesterday and then he got out a pair of shorts.

So I guess it's all sniff testing from here on out.

It's Coming...

If you are an at-home home dad, father-to-be or the primary caregiver of your child please consider attending

this

I went last year and found it very insightful and full of laughs.

And that was after I got called a loser on the plane to KC by some bitch...

Wasted Time

 


Virgina's Wasted Time deliver the goods at BCHQ.

Pomp & Circumstance

 

I took the boys to the campus of UNC in Chapel Hill Saturday afternoon for they could see the football players make their pre-game walk from the Old Well to Kenan Stadium.

I have to say it was pretty cool.

The crowd was large and electric, clearly juiced about new head coach Butch Davis and the prospect of finally having a ranked football team.

Another reason the crowd was jittery was because of the announcement that Appalachian State beat Michigan.

WTF?

 

Only in North Carolina.

Cole Strikes Again!

 

Dude made off with the digital camera again yesterday.

And once again I discovered these amazing pictures on the camera while looking for the shots I took of the baby squirrel.

Charlie The Squirrel

 

Tuesday night after the family returned from the pool, a little baby squirrel came out of the shrubs next to our driveway and started to approach us.

It was a total Disney-like moment: you could almost see the thought bubbles over his head.

"Are you my dad?"

"Are you my mom?"

"Brothers??"

Now even though squirrels are everywhere in my neighborhood, I have never seen a baby squirrel.

This lil fella was clearly confused and scared.

And he kept looking at me like I gave birth to him.

When we went inside he followed us to the door like a puppy; all clumsy limbs and rocks for brains.

So I left a little bowl of water, some bread and some nuts out there for him and we called it a day. The next morning when the boys woke up they went out front to look for him but Charlie, as I had dubbed him because he just looked like a Charlie, was gone.

After I dropped the boys off at their respective school's I came back to do some laundry. The dryer didn't seem to be doing its job so I went out back to check the exhaust and was startled by a grey blob sitting on the lawnmower in my shed.

It's was Charlie.

And once again he looked at me like I was his parent and beagn to walk toward me. Once again I got some water and food and tried to place it near him but as I walked away he followed me.

So I went inside, did a little quick internet research, got a box, lined it with a towel and then went back out on to my deck. I picked up Charlie with another towel, he shrieked a shriek I've never heard, and I put him in the box. Then I ran some errands. A friend stopped by on his way running about town doing errands and I showed him Charlie. When we came out back Charlie again made a bee line toward me once he saw me and as I bent down to say hello I almost felt like he was about to jump on me.

By now it was 1pm and time to pick up Cole from playschool. He asked about Baby Jr. (his name for the squirrel) and I told him that Charlie was indeed still around and now on the back deck. When we pulled into the driveway, Cole barged out of the car, into the front door, out the back door and on to the deck to see the squirrel.

He was just sitting on the back rest of the bench chillin'.

Cole was totally excited to tell his brother so at 3:15pm we left to pick up Spencer from school and once united the two boys talked about the baby squirrel that was going to live in their backyard. When we got home Spencer went out back but Charlie was no where to be found. They boys played some before Spencer opted to ride his bmx bike around the back yard doing "stunts" dreaming of a day he'd be like Travis Pastrana. I went back inside to finish up the chili I was cooking for dinner when Spencer called out, "Dad! The squirrel! The squirrel!"

And as soon as I stepped out the door I saw Charlie in his rodent toddler gallop heading towards the deck. I scooped him up with a towel (more like he stepped on to it) and placed him back on the box. He was shaking. I then put on some gloves and held him and gently petted (is that even a word?) the little guy to comfort him. I guess it must of worked because after that he sat in the box and ate a raisan and an almond along with lapping up a bunch of water.

By then my wife came home and now Charlie was either trying to nap (my hunch) or dying (her hunch). Once again, after consulting the internet, we found a neighbor just a fews blocks away who was in the business of rehabilitating baby squirrels. So my wife and the boys took a short ride over to the woman's house to drop of Charlie.

The boys were bummed, and quite honestly, I was a little bit as well because we had all daydreamed about the pet squirrel that was going to live in our back yard yet be friendly enough to feed.

Once again a lesson was learned by my sons: wild animals should remain wild.

Twirling

 

"I was twirling Dad," said Cole of this picture he took.

"Twirrrrrrllllliiinnnnggg," he said.

Green Floor

 

I dig this kid pic for some reason.

I think I've got a budding art photographer on my hands.

Eye For Composition

 

My 4-year-old son has got an eye for composition.

I saw him walking around with the digital camera this weekend but only today did I discover that he was actually taking pictures with it.

The Loners

 

Eddie Taylor of The Loners.

Two-piece garage rock from Raleigh.

Tooth

 

J-ME from Tooth.

Metal from Durham.

Dedicated to Satan.

This Weekend

Aftering barely surviving last weekend's shenanigans, I now have to pony up tomorrow and play punk rock dad.

Click headline for link...

Last Weekend

I went to a bachelor party in Hollywood.

It consisted of the bachelor dressed in a Batman costume, a booze bus, a midget dominatrix, golden showers, a stop at a Mexican lesbian bar, a trip to what appeared to be a gay porn set complete with tranny lap dances for the bachelor, and well, soo much more.

Pretty much what I expected from a bunch of

Jackasses

Goin' Crazy From The Heat

Seriously.

I can handle a couple of one hundred degree days a summer but this year it has proved to be just too much.

We've had the better part of the last three weeks with temperatures cresting the triple digits.

There's not much to do when it gets that hot in the Southeast. A few weeks back we were blessed to be at the beach (sorta) but even being on the sand with an ocean breeze the temperature was still be unbearable at times and chased us into AC.

The heat has pretty much killed our herb and vegetables gardens. I guess the plus side here is that my lawn is brown and hasn't needed to be mowed that much during the past two months.

80 degrees is going to feel downright chilly when it finally comes.

The BHH, Merv and Me

Unless you live under a rock you probably heard that Merv Griffin passed away this week. I worked for Merv for a few years in the early '90s.

Sort of.

I was a pool boy at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills that Merv owned.

At the time, I had given up on the prospect of finding full-time employment in the film industry and had taken the age old task of working part-time shit jobs and working as a freelance journalist part-time.

I had spent the better part of two months working as a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles ferrying documents back and forth between law offices and the district and superior courts. I loved being on my bike all day and loved the outcome of that: I had legs of steel and lungs the size of the Grand Canyon. But the company I worked for treated us messengers like pawns and paid a wage that was barely livable(I think I was making like $6.50 and hour - in 1993 - in LA!). So one day while waiting for a delivery I scanned the Help Wanted classifieds and saw that the Beverly Hilton was hiring for valet drivers. I had spent the better part of my college days working as a courier in DC so I knew how to drive a car. And I figured the tips would be good.

I called in work late the next day and then went to the hotel and filled out application before arriving at work several hours late. The next day I got a call saying that while I wasn't qualified to be a valet because I didn't have experience with models like Bentleys and Rolls Royces. No shit! But the girl in HR did say, "we are looking for a pool attendant."

A couple of weeks later I found myself poolside at the Beverly Hilton passing out towels to guests and cleaning the Olympci size pool in the mornings.

This was the hotel that had the storied Trader Vic's.

This was the hotel that held the Golden Globe Awards.

This was the hotel that Heidi Fleiss got busted running her prostitution ring in.

There we a lot of odd happenings going on around that place and many stories - too many to delve into at this moment.

But I will tell the Christmas Tree story...

One year during Christmas, there was a celebrity tree auction held in the hotel of the lobby. Essentially, this meant that famous people sent their assistants over to one of the several ballrooms designated for tree decoration to do their work. For two weeks the hotel ballrooms were filled with queeny bitches and uptight wenches all trying to "outdo" each other with their fashion sense.

Rosanne was currently bitch of all bitches at this time so she had her personal assistant cover her tree in black roses.

Whoopi Goldberg was currently in some Star Trek movie so hers was appropriately themed.

We pool boys were called in to help move the trees to the lobby since we were under the guidance of the Maintenance Dept. A few assistants made the blunder of not considering the fact that the doorway out of the ballroom was 8 feet so their 10 foot trees had to be leaned through resulting in ornaments and decorations taking the plunge.

One tree in particular caused us a great problem: it was Bob Hope's tree and it was decorated like Carmen Miranda and had all this fruit on top of it thus making it top heavy.

So me and my co-worker very carefully guided this tree down the hall into the lobby where our boss, Rick, Merv Griffin, and a photographer from somewhere were discussing placement of the said trees.

We stood and waited as they labored over something truly not worthy of laboring over and at some moment in the conversation I saw my co-worker place his leg on the dolly. Then in the kind of slow motion you only see in movies, we all watched helplessly as the Bob Hope tree started to slowly fall. I glanced at the faces around me, then back at the tree, then back at the faces.

Everything not only appeared to be happening in slow motion but in total silence as well. A silence broken by the loud pop of ceramic bulbs exploding on impact.

I laughed. Not a giggle laugh. But a hardy bellow and then immediately had to cup my mouth, turn my back and try not to let them see my shoulders shaking.

"Well don't just stand there boys!" screamed Rick. "Clean that up!"

The damage was too hard to overcome and Bob's tree ended up nestled in a corner because that was the only way it could stand up. We wondered how much it went for in the auction.

It was truly one of the funniest and most surreal moments of my life.

Arrggghhh!

For some reason Picasa isn't posting my pics to Blogger.

I fucking hate my PC. It is shit. it blinks and hums and fades and flcikers and has more viruses than a Shanghai whore.

Part of the problem could stenm from being laid up after hernia surgery and having two kids on the ol' Dell unsupervised.

An error prompt has just appeared as I type this and I have no desire to sit on my Internet provider's help line for two hours like my wife did before we left for the beach only to have nothing solved.

WiFi cafe/library access with my MacBook is just a few weeks away when the boys go back to school.

The Cream Of The Crop

 

Some of the 200 plus sharks teeth we found during our week's stay in North Topsail Island, North Carolina.

Beach Themes

 

The family spent the last week at the beach in North Carolina. This year my wife and I decided that we would have a theme - musically speaking - and that it would be metal. Specifically late '80s metal like Junkyard (picture above), Danzing II, Judas Priest, T.S.O.L. and of course liberal amounts of Dio...