Archive for November 2010
Want $20?
Black Friday and Boise Goes Down Edition
Since my Christmas shopping was finished a long time ago, here is your chance to earn money for whatever you’re going to buy. Best Answers win $20
What is the top Christmas present this year?
What is the best system to determine NCAA football champion?
Any good suggestions for a big meal over the final weeks of the year?
And the Answers
over 40 e-mails this weekend. If there was anything I could buy for someone that they value more than the money it costs, they would have already bought it themselves. Any answer other than cash is wrong. I reluctantly agree there are some good things you can’t buy with money. If you feel so strongly about that, you don’t want the $20 as much as the next guy
Any playoff is the correct answer. Whether it is four, six, eight, 10, 12 or 16 teams is only a minor detail. How the teams are decided and seeded and where and when the games are played is completely immaterial
Lots of good suggestions. A few I’m even going to do. A whole turkey was a good idea, but isn’t going to happen
One winner of the $20, Ralph G; since there were so much interest, also two second place winners each receiving $10, Max M and Alan C. Checks go in the mail as soon as I stop being lazy
Thanksgiving
For many Americans, Thanksgiving means sitting down to a large meal then eating only a small amount. This year I went with a Thanksgiving meal that is truly fitting for someone who likes to eat … large and nutritious. Complete with side dishes, turkey and dessert … unlike most people I actually ate all of it
Thanksgiving menu:
Green Bean Casserole
ingredients: green beans
directions: cook (or eat raw)
Cranberry Sauce
ingredients: cranberries
directions: cook according to the package (boil with water) replace sugar with splenda
Stuffing
ingredients: remove the cornbread and it’s just carrots, celery, onions, salt, pepper and garlic
Brussel Sprouts
Didn’t know this was a traditional Thanksgiving dish, but saw them on more than one cooking show this past week. Add heat and serve
1.5 pounds green bean casserole, 1.5 pounds cranberry sauce, 1.5 pounds stuffing, 0.75 pounds brussel sprouts
All 5.25 pounds cooked and ready to eat
At opening kickoff of the first NFL game put on a pot of coffee and microwaved the green beans, stuffing and brussel sprouts. Cranberry sauce went on the stove. Finished everything by the start of the second quarter. At $1.50 for a 12 ounce bag, Cranberries cost more than twice as much as the other ingredients, still $6.45 for all of the first courses
Main Course:
At half-time of the football game it was time for turkey. Lots of whole frozen turkeys can be found for around 50-cents per pound. That’s a great deal, but the tradeoff is high cost of cooking and cleaning. Decided instead for something more expensive, $5.38 for two pounds with cooking and cleaning costs near zero. Could possibly find some turkey option for slightly cheaper, but these Turkey Meatballs have 144 grams of protein so that’s nice. Also five-ounces of turkey so I can even have a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving
Two more pounds, 144g protein
Dessert:
Once the third quarter started it was time to bake. One 29-ounce can of pumpkin, baked into a Pumpkin Pie according to the package, except no crust and splenda instead of sugar. Just pumpkin, milk, eggs and splenda. In took until the end of the game for it to cook and cool and be ready to eat. During that time, had a Sweet Potato and a Yam and one 20-ounce can of pre-made sugar free Apple Pie filling which is just apples, corn starch and splenda. Total cost for ingredients pictured was $5.20
final five pounds or so
A large and nutritious Thanksgiving meal for not too much money. Next year skip the pumpkin pie, since that was the only major cooking requirement.
Food Network Hates Eating
Watch virtually any show on Food Network and it becomes amazingly clear that they hate eating. I learned that years ago. Yet with Thanksgiving coming up I decided to give them a chance. Thanksgiving is perhaps the one day of the year where American culture at least makes an attempt to put aside it’s collective hatred of eating
The average person may make a mockery of eating, but at least some try, so I’ll play along. In search of sort of traditional dishes decided to watch a few shows. Best example was so-called Green Bean Casserole. Green beans are one of the very best things to eat because they cost less than $1 per pound, cooking and clean-up cost very little and you can eat about seven pounds of them and still be under 1 000 Calories
On the Food Network, the recipe had more oil and butter than actual green beans. That alone moves it from around 1 000 Calories in a decent sized meal to around 10 000 (that’s not even counting the three full cup of flour also included). Are the people on the Food Network really suggesting to eat more than 10 000 Calories in one meal, even on Thanksgiving? It’s much more likely that they are suggesting their viewers eat very small amounts. It takes a pretty high level of hatred for eating to devote nearly every single hour of programming urging their viewers to eat barely anything at all
Do Potatoes Count as a Vegetable?
Alternate Headline: They Wanted it Doggie Style
Enough people have told me how much of an idiot and asshole I am because I like to eat that I have become somewhat hardened to it and it now only bothers me on occasion. Most of the time I am able to accept that I’m an idiot and asshole. Most of the time I can blow it off so long as I remind myself I can always have another big meal
Someone sent me an e-mail letting me know about a place giving away prizes to whomever might actually like to eat mashed potatoes. A rare opportunity to actually be able to enjoy a meal with other people who like to eat. Except once I arrived at the event, I found out it was just another way to show how anyone who likes to eat is an idiot and an asshole
We were not going to eat mashed potatoes the way any person would ever eat them. It was decided anyone who likes to eat deserves to be treated like a dog. The only allowable approach would be to shove your face into a 10-pound pile of mashed potatoes for five minutes. Thought very hard about walking away. Really didn’t want to play along with the idea of showing how anyone who likes to eat must be an idiot and an asshole for going along with such a stupid stunt. But I was already there and most of the time at these sort of things they hate anyone who likes to eat so strongly that anyone who fits that criteria isn’t just told they’re an asshole, they’re also banned completely. Since everyone already thinks I’m an idiot and an asshole and because I was actually allowed, I went ahead and enjoyed a good-sized meal no matter how dumb the whole thing was
Finished eight pounds of mashed potatoes in five minutes. Ron K another guy who likes to eat finished 5.5 and Jimmy P finished 4.5. Obviously if we were treated like normal people instead of animals and used spoons it would have been possible to eat the full 10 pounds in less than five minutes. But eight is more than half-way filling and as a likely once in a lifetime sort of thing it was actually fun
What 10-pounds of mashed potatoes looks like
thanks to: Silverton
Top 10 Signs for Strength and Fitness
Top 10 ways to know if a person is in shape. From most difficult to easiest
Touch your toes without bending your knees
Do 20 pullups
Dunk a basketball
Clean-and-jerk 140 kilograms Women only have to use 90kg and only have to touch the rim, not dunk
Go 72 hours without sleeping
Go 72 hours without eating Bonus points if you can go three days without eating or sleeping and do so comfortably. Falling asleep when you’re tired and waking up when fully rested is the healthy thing to do, but if a person has to be eating and sleeping constantly, that’s pretty weak
Eat three large pizzas in one hour Very easy for anyone who likes to eat. All those carbs and Calories and nourishment’s are always a good way to keep your strength
The absolute best and truest tests a person can use to measure their strength and fitness: Win a professional MMA fight. Or score 7000 points in a decathlon
On a personal note, I’ve done five of these in my lifetime. So at one time I was half-way strong. I’m even weaker than that now. I’m so weak I can only come up with nine entries for a Top 10 list
The Biggest Loser
This is a TV game show on NBC where a bunch of fat people see who can lose the most weight. The winner receives $250 000
I was talking with CBS while they were going over the idea of a game show where people see who can gain the most weight. They decided it wouldn’t be worth it, because any viewer would know in the first 10 minutes that I would win easily
Fucking Proverbs
An apple is like 2% of one days diet. Remind yourself how fucking overpriced they are and that will keep you away from doctors
Election Day Reminder
Unless the election is decided by one single vote, you could have not voted and the result would have been exactly the same. That is not to say your vote is worthless. To some people the act of touching a screen or checking a box next to a candidate’s name satisfies some ultimate sense of civic duty. If that is worth more than the time and gas it costs, go for it. If your time is worth more than that, you won’t vote. I think it’s great that America has both a lot of people who value their time so highly along with a lot of people who put more value on their sense of civic duty
Voting is Like Sex
- It so often costs a lot more than it’s worth, yet people still feel compelled to do it
- No matter how much people do it, there is going to be a lot more talking about it than actually doing it
- You can give it away for free, but once you try to sell it there are all sorts of new problems
Voting is Nothing Like Eating
For most people, whichever political ideology they align with, half the population will agree with them and half will think they’re complete assholes. When it comes to eating, if it’s something you enjoy and commit yourself to, virtually everyone will hate you and think you are complete scum
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“People died for the right to vote”
“People died for driving drunk”
