The Grilling Book: Recipe #1 – "Chicken Skewers with Coriander Marinade and Lemon Salsa"

The first recipe I have chosen to tackle in “The Grilling Book” is chicken skewers with coriander marinade and lemon salsa. Lets take a look at the ingredients:

2 Lemons
1/2 cup Cucumber finely chopped
3 Tbsp of thinly sliced Scallions
1 Chili finely chopped
Pinch of suger and Kosher salt
1.5 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs cut into 1.5 inch pieces
Freshly ground Black Pepper
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp of fresh chopped Cilantro
1/4 cup plain whole milk Yogurt
1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil plus more for brushing
2 Garlic Cloves coarsely chopped
1 Tsp fresh cracked coriander seeds
1 Tsp Turmeric (optional)

Using a sharp knife, cut all peel and white pith from lemons; discard. Cut between membranes to release lemon segments into a medium bowl; squeeze juice from membranes into bowl and discard membranes. Strain juice into a clean bowl; reserve lemon segments and juices separately. Mix segments, 1 Tbsp. lemon juice (set aside remaining juice for another use), cucumber, 2 Tbsp. scallions, and chile in a small bowl. Stir in sugar; season salsa to taste with salt and set aside. Place chicken in a medium bowl and season with salt and pepper. Purée ¼ cup cilantro, yogurt, 1 Tbsp. oil, garlic, coriander, and turmeric, if using, in a mini food processor or blender until smooth. Pour marinade over chicken; toss to coat. Let marinate at room temperature for 20 minutes. Do Ahead: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before continuing. Build a medium fire in a charcoal grill, or heat a gas grill to medium-high. Brush grill grate with oil. Thread 4 pieces of chicken on each skewer. Grill, turning once and watching closely to prevent burning, until browned and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat registers 165°F, about 8 minutes. Transfer chicken to plates. Spoon lemon salsa over chicken. Garnish with remaining 2 Tbsp. cilantro and 1 Tbsp. scallions.

A few things about this recipe from the average Joe perspective. I changed the recipe a little bit because I couldn’t find the “Meyer Lemons” the books recipe called for. It stated that I could use regular lemons but to not use as many due to the tartness of them. So I used 4 lemons when making the recipe, which was way too many. 2 would be fine in the future. Also, I had never worked with coriander seeds before, so the way that I cracked them was by putting them between two sheets of paper towel and rolling over them with a rolling pin. Crushing them in a garlic press works as well.
Before I start grilling, I need to arm myself with a beverage. I decided to go with a bomber of Ale Smith IPA, a fantastic IPA from the West Coast and one of my favorite hoppy beverages.

The chicken marinates in the purée blend created. Super Tasty.

This dish turned out awesome. My first grilling recipe from this book was a total success. Chicken Thigh meat is delicious on the grill and is incredibly juicy. The lemon salsa was really tasty as well, however my wife and I both agreed that the salsa without the side of wild rice that we added might have been a little too intense. Overall, this recipe was solid!

January 13, 2014 0

Netflix Alert: "The Last Stand"

    When I saw that this was on Netflix, I was super excited. First off, the people that made the trailer for this should be fired. The trailer was so hoaky, that even I had my doubts about the movie going into it. I was wrong. This movie was exactly what I could have hoped for. Arnold’s first full blown movie back from politics is nothing more than your typical Arnold action film. That’s all a guy like me can ask for.
    One thing I noticed while watching this, was that it took me a little bit to get used to what Arnold looks like now. He’s not like other actors, where you didn’t really notice the ageing much because you have continuously watched their movies year after year. He was literally gone from movies for a very long time. The initial shock of how old he actually is goes away after a little bit. Once that leaves, its easy to get sucked into this simplistic but entertaining action thriller. It also helps that Arnold plays an old sheriff and isn’t exactly trying to be what Stallone makes himself out to be in the “Expendables” movies.
    The movie’s plot is simple. Arnold plays an ex-cop from the LAPD who basically decided to go the simple route after being involved in some heavy shit back in LA. He is now the loved Sheriff in a wholesome little town full of old people, family diners, and hot country girls. Every girl under the age of 30-35 looked like a model in country clothes. The Police department consists of one Sheriff and four deputies. Johnny Knoxville also has an entertaining roll in the movie as a citizen of the town that is kind of whacky and just so happens to collect weapons (obviously). I think that this is were the trailer went wrong. It’s very Knoxville/Arnold heavy, almost as if its a buddy flick, when in reality, Knoxville isn’t even in it that much. Its like they made the trailer and didn’t care about getting the story across but only wanted to sell it by showing the only two stars in the movie in a sequence of scenes that made no sense.
   The ball gets rolling when an escaped convict who just so happens to be very dangerous and has a racing background, escaped custody in an elaborate sequence of events, and is racing to the border of a bridge his men made, into Mexico. He is travelling in this modified Corvette that apparently has 1000 horsepower and can out run helicopters. So many of the scenes involving this car gave me flashbacks to the old Knight Rider show, I often laughed.

Of course on the way to this bridge that they made, the convict must travel through this town, where Arnold has just become aware of this guy and has basically told the FBI to eat it as he wants to handle it himself.
I enjoyed this film way more than I expected to! It was an awesome “welcome back” movie for Arnold and has gotten me even more excited for his future projects. The action scenes were awesome, the film was really violent, and the battle scenes involving Arnold were just as bad ass as they used to be. He’s still got it.

I definitely recommend this one.

January 9, 2014 0

The "Do’s and Don’ts" of Torrenting

This post by no means promotes the downloading of anything illegal, please use the information I provide here at your own risk.

I have been torrenting files for a long time. I remember when I first discovered torrents. This was around the time when people were using Napster-like p2p clients to download single songs. I remember the thrill I got downloading entire collections with the click of a button, all organized in folders by album. It was fucking awesome. I don’t swear much on this blog, but when I do, its warranted. Getting a decade of albums downloaded from a band in 5 minutes is indeed “fucking awesome.” Back then things were easier, nobody really knew how to fight the war on file sharing. Today its different. I am an advocate of file sharing to the fullest, but you need to take precautions before doing so.
Someone that is not familiar with using bit torrents might just waltz over to the Pirate Bay and start downloading. Maybe back then it was a good idea, but these days, you have to be smart. There are 3rd party companies that scour IP’s looking for idiots downloading cam videos of movies released yesterday only to offer them scary settlements or cease and desist letters. Here are some rules and guidelines to follow.

1) Don’t use Pirate Bay. Don’t get me wrong. The Pirate Bay is legendary and they are constantly fighting for internet freedom. The truth is, unless you are pretty experienced downloading torrents, this site can expose you to torrents riddled with virus’s, fake files, or torrents monitored closely for infringement.

2) Get yourself onto a private tracker. There are some really great private trackers out there. The problem with these is that its tough to find any with open registration. The only way to get into them is to be persistent and check every day to see if they open up registration. Another way is to get an invite from someone who is already a member. You can sometimes gain invites by being cool in a forum where someone might have a spare one for you. There are a number of great private trackers out there, just do a little research. I belong to “Iptorrents”. Another good one is “ilovetorrents”. Again, there are tons. The benefits of belonging to these are high speed downloads, and every file posted will usually have plenty of very accurate comments pertaining to the file of interest. You rarely find fake files posted or anything infected with a virus. One thing that you can’t be when belonging to a private tracker is a “leacher”. These are people who download files but do not share them. The trackers usually have a minimum ratio of download to upload that they want you to maintain. If you don’t maintain this requirement over a period of time, they will ban you from the community. This can sometimes be tough to do, especially when we get to my next topic.

3) Be careful what you seed. This won’t be popular amongst file sharing community, but if you are new to torrenting, don’t seed anything until you learn the ropes. You are probably thinking, “How can i get my sharing ratio up on a private tracker if I shouldn’t seed?” That answer is easy. Know and understand what you are seeding. Don’t seed anything new and popular as they are sure to be targeted files. Join a private tracker and download something obscure. A lot of the time, you can sort the search results for files that have a lot of people downloading them. Look for something obscure, even if its something that you don’t care about, you are getting it to increase your ratio. Another way to increase your ratio without uploading, is to “Donate”. Many of the private trackers will grant you a certain amount of Gigabyte downloads per dollar that you donate. The money goes towards server costs. Its a nice way to not seed, but to contribute without being looked at as a leach.

4) Get a VPN or Torrent Proxy….or even better..Both. These days, with the NSA nonsense, there hasn’t been a better time to get yourself a VPN. VPN’s are tricky. If you are not familiar with a VPN, its basically a service that gives you an alternate IP address other than your own. Everything you do online will go through the vpn first, kind of like a middle man. This in turn hides your IP address from prying eyes. Just recently, TorrentFreak recently published an article that was more of an investigative piece, where they went to all of the VPN services asking them about “Logging”. The article can be seen here. Many of them openly stated that they didn’t keep logs while some chose to not comment. The others simply said that they emptied the logs after a few days or daily, simply because they didn’t have the space to house that much data. When it comes down to it, this is the statement that carries the most validity. When it comes down to it, they could be lying, who knows. One thing that is probably true though, is that the amount of data to log every users activities is probably pretty ridiculous, and they would need to empty the logs. Regardless, you might as well go with one that promises complete anonymity. Torguard offers a VPN and specifically a torrent proxy, both relatively inexpensive. So basically I have my VPN and then when I torrent, my traffic goes through a proxy and then through the vpn, and vice versa. Can your activities be tracked if you use a VPN. Its possible, depends on how much they want to spend figuring out who you are and tracking your whereabouts. Again, this post isn’t promoting illegal downloading so this shouldn’t be a concern, but you should know your options when trying to stay private.

There is so much to learn about file-sharing, that your research shouldn’t end here. Read as much as you can about downloading and about current events with the copyright wars. It all directly effects file sharing and torrents weather you download illegal content or not. Always be educated and informed. Knowing is half the battle!

January 9, 2014 0

Netflix Alert: Film Review "Overkill" (1987)

We here in Buffalo, NY are currently experiencing an actual blizzard. Everything is shut down, major roads are closed, and its pretty much a lazy day. I picked up the Roku remote and flipped through my recommendation list on Netflix. This list is usually pretty absurd due to the variety of things that get watched in this house but one thing caught my eye. You can almost guarantee that if you show me a sideshow of images and one of the images just so happens to be someone with mulleted curly hair and a Tom Selleck mustache doing karate, I’m probably going to look at that with interest. The film was called “Overkill”, and it was a colossal pile of awesome shit.

“A Tokyo cop is sent to Los Angeles to help an LAPD detective break up a yakuza (Japanese organized crime syndicate) ring operating in the city“- IMDB

You knew the movie was going to be awesome when the beginning sequence set the stage with a police chief narrating the introduction to the story with an over the top voice straight out of an old gangster movie. The movie basically revolves around this California cop “Mickey” who looks absolutely ridiculous. He is constantly either shirtless or wearing completely unbuttoned vests with no shirt on underneath. He occasionally wears this generic wind-breaker coat, but still ceases to put on any shirt under it. The best is when he is just casually doing work at the police station, as everyone else is adequately dressed accept for him. He looks like a male exotic dancer throughout the film. There is even a scene were he has to go undercover as a male stripper and performs. Any normal person filming this would have at least had him act semi awkward performing his dance, but this guy goes all out like he had been doing it for 10 years. His dance moves reminded me of when Slater used to break it down on “Saved by the Bell.” The guy clearly had dancing in his skill set.
Basically Mickey is noticing increased activity from the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) and wants to put a stop to it. They make it clear that nobody else at the police station even cares about it accept for him. He states multiple times that he doesn’t want California to turn into 1920’s Chicago and that he would defend California himself if he had to. Mickey and his partner then break every law on the books to get information on the Yakuza. The movie is loaded with terrible action scenes where you barely get to see guns fire. The would do quick cuts and you would often see people bleeding from areas they weren’t even shot in.
Perhaps the most ridiculous sequence in the movie is the last 3 minutes (this doesn’t even really spoil anything). In about 3 minutes, Mickey quits the force. They show him walk into a karate school where he watched the sensei perform with a sword for maybe 20 seconds. Mickey is then shown in his living room, soaking with sweat holding the sword and yelling while doing simplistic strikes with it. Then Mickey is working at the Sushi restaurant of the kid he meets in the movie. It was like a terribly done montage to make Mickey “just a little Japanese”. They cap off this 3 minute sequence by having the kid that owns the Sushi Restaurant ask Mickey if he would ever be able to walk again (he was in a wheelchair). The scene quickly changes to the beach where Mickey places the paralysed kid onto a horse, and they literally go riding off into the sunset. A paralysed kid riding full speed on a horse…….
This is a great film to laugh at and wasn’t bad enough to make me turn it off. If you end up getting stuck home because of a blizzard, I would recommend this for a good laugh.

“The Body Count is Overwhelming”

January 8, 2014 0

Happy Birthday! Wooden 6 Pack from Rustic Creek Products

My wife knows me well. We joke often about how I’m super easy to buy a gift for for the holidays or for my birthday. I’m just constantly into tons of things. One thing that is pretty consistent with me is my love for really good beer. My stepfather is also a beer advocate, so often there are times when I head over to his house with some select beers from home. Normally I look around for an old empty 6 pack cardboard and then just fill it with random beers. Not any more.

From Rustic Creek Wood Products

This nifty device not only makes it easy to carry some select beverages to my destination, but it also has a sweet old fashioned opener on the side of it. Mine of course came equipped with 6 awesome beers that my wife has researched before getting. This is a great gift for any beer lover!

January 5, 2014 0

Reason #1000 Why the Roku 3 is Amazing.

I’ve done several posts about the Roku box product. I’ve really had nothing terrible to say about the little black box, and last night I discovered another awesome feature!
My biggest problem with all of these media devices is that, in the end, I still find myself hooking my laptop up to my TV to watch movies that I have on my laptop’s hard drive. What I found out, is that the USB port on the side is totally functional for pulling and playing files from an external device. What this means is that I can hook up a huge hard drive, right up to the Roku thus attaching it to an entire library of movies! The “downside” is that it only plays mkv or mp4 video files, so you may need to convert some of your videos depending on what files they currently are.
All you need to do is hook your hard drive up to the Roku, and then go to the app store. There is a free app in the music section called, USB Media Player (or something along those lines), the logo looks like this:

Once you do this, you can open up the app, and the Roku should be able to read all the contents on the drive and play them. It is awesome.

November 19, 2013 0

Its About that Time! NO L.E.D.s!

Its getting to be that time of year. Actually its my favorite time, and today is one of those days where its mid-November and we have a freak day here in Buffalo, where it will be in the 60’s and sunny out! That can only mean one thing…….

Yes indeed, the lighting of our house….well, not exactly turning them on, but the installation. There is nothing like grabbing a ladder, a shit load of tangled lights, and a pint of beer to have AFTER the lights involving the ladder are put up.

I noticed that when I was in my local Home Depot, that there seems to be a steady decrease year to year, in real lights…everything seems to be converting to LED’s which to me, is horrible. Yeah, I get it….they last a long time, they use less electricity..whatever. They are ugly…..straight up ugly. There is no warmth to their glow, no tradition in their appearance; just nothing. I will hold out on buying these lights as long as I can. Call me old fashioned…

This morning while drinking some coffee and taking advantage of every second our baby sleeps, I decided to look at the internet for xmas decoration ideas, unique stuff, cool ideas, etc. Some of what I saw was pretty awesome, some sort of odd….you decide.

Like this…..

Nothing like turning your toilet into a cute xmas character with what appears to be eyes, and antlers and a nose….and a toilet seat mouth…that you will eventually put your fanny on and relieve yourself into……weird.

I’m not a fan of this display per say, but I like the idea of putting something around the door. My mom always has some sort of pine display around the frame of the door…this may be the newest addition to the house….not sure yet. Every year I like to add one more thing.

I have already added this to my Amazon wish list so that I don’t forget. These lights are solor powered! This is perfect for the tree we have out by the road. This is definitely something I’m doing this year!

I’ll have pictures of the final display posted here the day after thanksgiving (which is the day I’m allowed to turn on the lights). Stay Tuned!

November 16, 2013 0

Netflix Alert: "Messenger of Death"

There are some beauties on Netflix this month. Here is one from one of my favorite actors of all time, Charles Bronson. I have seen most of his films but somehow missed this one. “Messenger of Death” is the story of this family in a private Mormon community that was was slaughtered by two evil and mysterious visitors wielding shotguns. They destroy 3 women and 6 little children. Like most Bronson movies, there isn’t much left for the imagination in this brutal scene (although they spare you the imagery of the kids actually getting hit with bullets). Bronson plays a station wagon driving (with wood paneling) reporter who covers the story, and (big shocker) decides to take matters into his own hands.

Like most Bronson movies, the police fail to handle the case correctly due to the laws holding them back. In this case, they have to release the prime suspect from custody unless they planned on charging him with something, plus they say that the crime was outside their jurisdiction (which is kind of hilarious because they worked the crime scene.) Of course Bronson thinks all of this is bullshit. Even though Bronson knows the prime suspect they let go isn’t the killer, he is convinced that its one of two Mormon brothers, both blaming each other for the crime. Bronson eventually gets wrapped up in trying to prevent a group of angry Mormons from hunting down who they believe committed this crime. Things heat up when an elaborate scheme starts to unfold revealing the real motive behind all that has taken place.

Not my favorite Bronson movie by no stretch, but definitely not a stinker. I think my problem with the movie was just that Bronson was way to laid back in this. He lacked the bad ass element and horrible dialog that he was known for, especially for being a Cannon release which was known for being his worst (best) work.

Perhaps the icing on the cake in this movie, is when a character during a fairly climatic scene puts a gun up to his temple and pulls the trigger which results in a bang, s teeny puff of smoke, and perhaps the weakest bullet on earth as it doesn’t exit his head. One of the more ridiculous scenes I’ve encountered in a movie. You still get to see a few classic Bronson hand to hand combat scenes so the movie doesn’t totally disappoint. This is one to watch on a lazy Sunday. Not a classic, but enjoyable.

One of two Bronson Shirts on our website

Our Bronson shirts are available on our website, eBay store, and Etsy stores.

November 12, 2013 0

One Month!?

Time flies when you have an infant! It may seem like your nights last an eternity, but a month has gone by and it doesn’t even feel like it. What have I learned after a month? Nothing stays the same. You may think you figured out your baby, but you are probably wrong (unless you’re one of the lucky folks and have one of those babies that the literature says “sleeps a majority of the day”).

Some things we have picked up after a month:

1) The Swaddle: You read so much stuff online: “Swaddling is good,” “Swaddling is bad,” “Only swaddle for 3 months.” All I know is, the swaddle is a life saver. Our baby hates it, but there is no way she will sleep without it! She doesn’t even come close. Once those arms are free, she goes insane and her arms start flapping like shes trying to take flight, accept failing at it…..and then screaming because she can’t fly (that must be why shes screaming right?). Then we go in and swaddle her, and shes out in 10-15 minutes.

Doesn’t get much easier then that right? Wrong. The swaddle is amazing because she oddly is able to sleep, however her split personality kicks in every few minutes and you get bursts of rage as she tries to burst out of it. It then becomes a battle of the sleepy baby vs the angry raging baby. Even more annoying, if the sleepy baby wins, she may pass out, but then as soon as shes in anything less then a “deep” sleep, she will try and burst out even in a half sleep, which can sometimes result in a wide awake fit! This can usually be tapered with a pacifier..that is….only if she allows you to try that…sometimes she just spits it.

“Come on sweet little angel, lets go to bed…”

All kidding aside, she is getting easier to figure out and anything she may do to frustrate us is usually forgotten instantly when she smiles (except for when she is making you really mad, and then smiles at you while you are pulling your hair out).

2) So many baby products, so many promises: Its so easy to get wrapped up in the world of baby products that promise specific results. For instance, our baby likes to be rocked, so we bought this:

We figured, “Well, she calms down usually when shes rocked, maybe she will like this!?” This item ended up being great, if you need to kill ten minutes and get yourself a cup of coffee. Its not a very soothing item. The swing rocks sort of unnaturally which I think just makes the baby panic and get confused. We seem to have the same results every time (although its getting better). You sit her down, she looks confused, then starts to wave her arms in hopes of flying out of the seat and escaping us, which is then followed by hiccups and a full fledged panic.

3) Bottles for fussy babies: So after doing some reading, we thought that maybe the baby was so angry all the time because of the way she was being fed. We were just using some regular bottles, some given to us by the hospital (they sent us home with tons of stuff). My wife discovered these bottles online:

These things claim to reduce colic by 80%. That sounded pretty swell in our eyes. They have this odd venting system that sometimes makes a squeaky sound when shes eating. When we first used this, our dog (who is getting used to being second in our house now) looked really confused as if we awarded the baby with a squeaky toy.

The results from the bottle were pretty awesome. We went from a baby that screamed and cried 90% of the time she was awake (the other 10% she was eating), to only crying when its time to sleep. We now get to feed our baby and then enjoy her smile with a little play time! This product has delivered.

November 9, 2013 2

Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Shirt

Another new shirt out this week as I strive to get a few new items out before the holiday rush. This Mystery Science Theatre 3000 inspired shirt would be an awesome gift for any fan of the show. We have made this available in both American Apparel Creme and Standard Gildan off-white/creme. This has been posted in our Etsy, eBay, and website at supersweetshirts.com . Remember, the lowest prices are always on our website!