We have a pet chicken, and whoever has her on their lap is exempt from being asked favors that require moving
We may need at least one more chicken, since they do better with others. If any new ones are as cuddly and sweet as our current bird, we are fucked. No one will ever get anything done.
And yes, I know, “pet chicken”. Kind of bonkers. If you’d asked me in October if I would be walking around my house with a chicken on my shoulder, I would have laughed at you. What’s really hilarious is that we got her because of our other chicken. But the other chicken was actually a rooster, not a hen, and is anti social with other chickens, it turns out.
But I’ll tell you this much. If you can see a little pullet bouncing across the floor, trilling and flapping its wings to hop on your lap for cuddles, and don’t melt just a little, you’re not human lol.
This little fucking bird (that’s not so little now) gets up on my chest, nestles into my beard, and just trills when she’s ready to sleep. How the fuck am I going to wake her up just because someone in the house is bleeding to death? Nope, the bird will wake up eventually, and mops are there to clean up blood. They can just put pressure on the wound and wait.
That being said, spaghetti sauce. Yeah, home made is better, but “doctoring” a jarred sauce gets 95% as good without hours of work. You can’t fix the canned shit, but I’ve not found a jarred sauce that I can’t tweak with fresh herbs and some quickly sweated aromatics and end up with something that people love. It also satisfies my picky ass. Now, I will say that fucking ragu is pretty shit overall, and doctoring it only goes so far. But it is still good enough that making sauce from scratch ain’t happening.
Edit:
There seems to be a lot of range in spaghetti sauce recipes. It’s also important to note that I’m not talking about marinara.
So, the real time involved is split between prep and simmering.
Here’s how we do it. Remember this is an american talking here, so don’t redirect expect something traditionally Italian. And I’m a southerner that’s mostly german and Scots-Irish, so don’t expect any new York style stuff lol.
You take your tomatoes, skin them however you prefer. I use a quick dip in boiling water, aka blanching.
You give those peeled tomatoes a rough chop into nice size chunks. Now, the kind of tomato matters for that because something like a roma e isn’t gong to need as many chops as a beefsteak. You’d usually be using something like a roma anyway, but if your neighbor drops off a giant bucket of tomatoes, you can only use what you got, you know?
You chop up an onion, maybe two. You mince some garlic, maybe half a bulb if you really like garlic. I love garlic, so I go heavy.
Now, that’s your usual start. Most people in my family don’t add anything else in the way of veggies. Me? I like to char a couple of red or yellow bell peppers, skin them, and get them in there too. If I’m feeling frisky, I might have zucchini, eggplant, or whatever else cut up and ready to add at the appropriate time too, but that’s optional.
You get the onions sweating. While they’re starting, you feet your herbs together. Idgaf about fresh vs dried, each has benefits for flavor, you do what you prefer. I do oregano, basil, marjoram, a little thyme, and that’s it. I’m simple.
A little black pepper, a little salt (you really don’t need much, maybe a teaspoon for a big batch; salt your damn pasta water instead) to taste.
Once the onions are almost ready, I add the peppers since the quick char and steam to peel them tends to get them halfway cooked anyway.
This is around a half hour of work for most people. For me, it’s closer to an hour. Yay disability!
Then you add your tomatoes, herbs, and any optional veggies. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
After that, it’s patience. You’re making sure any veggies added are tender, and after that it’s cooking things down and letting the flavors develop. And, I promise you, anything under a half hour of simmering isn’t going to taste right, and will be super runny. You’ll usually have what amounts to chunky tomato water until close to the hour mark. For a big pot (my biggest is 6 quarts, and it starts damn near full when I do it) an hour and a half is bare minimum for the right thickness.
Now, if you’re going to jar that up, you’re done except for that part, which isn’t involved in what I originally said.
If you’re going to add meat, you’ll want to start browning it off about a half hour ahead of when the thickness will be right. You add the cooked meat in and let it simmer for 15 minutes at minimum. Do yourself a favor and deglaze the pan used with a nice, semisweet red wine, add that to the pot and go at least a half hour after adding it.
Now, exactly how long it needs to simmer is variable because you’re dealing with tomatoes, and the water content varies between varieties, time of year, weather conditions, etc. But I’ve never had a full sized batch take less than an hour and a half counting from the initial bring-to-boil stage.
I dunno, maybe there’s time savers I’ve never thought of. Maybe the folks saying it’s a half hour are doing a different version of “from scratch”, or whatever. But that’s how we do it, and it’s pretty much what the typical recipes I’ve seen online do (I went and checked because I wondered if I was crazy lol), plus or minus some details that don’t really change simmer time.
I’ve had some batches need a full two hours of simmering. And, yeah, you don’t have to stand over the pot the whole time, but chances are you’ll still be in the kitchen cleaning, keeping an eye on things stirring occasionally, adding any herbs or spices to adjust taste as it goes, etc. So it isn’t like you can just pop down to the local pub (or equivalent in your location) and go by time alone. You’ll still be in the general vicinity, with the added heat and humidity from cooking.
But that’s why I rarely go from scratch. I can pick up a jar of whatever, add some herbs, extra garlic and/or onions, brown any meat and then the deglaze and be done in under an hour from start to finish, including prep. The taste isn’t the same, nor is the texture, but it’s still yummy.
Depends on how it went. But I’m well armed, and my location honors the castle doctrine, and my town is right pissy about trespassing.
Back when I first got published, I was dumb enough to do so under my real name.
This has led to a few locals seeing my books are the local library, recognizing the name and finding me. They’ve all been quite polite, so no big deal.
But the truth is that anyone that showed up causing problems isn’t going to have a good time. My neighbors are mostly crazier than I am, and we’ve all had to show up for each other here and there when someone was acting a fool. So, chances are, whatever idiot it was would get run off long before I had to shoot them.
And, since I know most of the damn town to some degree, including the chief of police and the county sheriff, it isn’t like an outsider would even be in town long, unless they enjoy the hospitality of a jail. While the police are a problem overall, the local departments have guys in charge that are trying to fix that to some degree. But not to the degree that some assholes from the internet won’t end up being seen doing something they can get charged for.
Jesus, being real, I’m certain my one neighbor would likely kill someone if he saw them taking pictures around here without being warned in advance. He’s touchy. He might not start out planning it, but he’d be up in their face, and if they didn’t just leave, he would try to make them leave. If they fought back? He’s a bit touchy, but a whole lot trained.
But yeah, celebrities don’t have that kind of connection to their area like private citizens do, and not every private citizen does either. When I lived in the city, I tried being nice to my neighbors and got outright told to fuck off.
However! I encourage people to remember that grandpa joe is not a faker in the world he’s from!
Since the movie is what most peeps remember, and where the memes usually come from, the first thing to remember is that it’s a musical.
Musicals, by the established rules of the overall genre, do not reflect reality at all times. Even mostly dramatic musicals like Man of LaMancha break some reality in order to function as musicals. Take the scene with the ruffians and “Dulcinea” as an example.
Second, the movie. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory is essentially a fantasy piece. You’ve got the Oompa Loompas as prime evidence of that. Orange skinned humanoids that do not exist in the real world (jokes aside). Many things in the chocolate factory break the laws of physics or otherwise bend reality. There’s geese laying golden eggs, ffs.
Third, the theme of the movie isn’t actually torturing children. The theme of the movie is the redemptive and uplifting power of dreams. That’s achieved by the journey of Charlie getting his golden ticket and everything in his life getting better.
Grandpa Joe hasn’t been laying there in bed faking it (though, in movie, there’s never anything about the grandparents being unable to move or walk at all, they’re just frail and weak).
He is in his eighties or nineties.
What gets him up and dancing isn’t that he was faking and forgot to, it’s joy.
GJ is transformed by joy, by happiness. His grandson has, through luck or destiny, gotten the golden ticket to a brighter, better life! This doesn’t trick Joe into forgetting his infirmity. It gives him the joy to overcome it.
Joe’s transformation, rejuvenation, is because he is so filled with joy that his grandson will have a new life, that it changes him into the grandfather he wished he could be. Don’t forget that he had sacrificed his one real pleasure to give Charlie a chance at that.
But, look, I know that the grandpajoehate is ostensibly a meme. It’s a joke poking fun at the very musical rules that allow a bed-bound person to magically be cured in the first place. But it never acknowledges the fact that his spontaneous rejuvenation is magic, and that the magic is the magic of love.
In a cynical world, we believe that love is not transformative because the real world grinds us down. But love can be transformative for us too. We just have to be willing to let it work.
I’ve always enjoyed chips as a quasi palate cleanser for dishes that run fatty and have sauerkraut. Which is a fairly small range of foods. But it’s because the flatness of the potatoes, the single note saltiness, and the relatively lower fat levels do a good job of refreshing the palate alongside something else pickled and/or a beverage.
But it seems like that would make this dog have less “oomph” to the taste buds. That’s one of the great things about kraut on a wiener, how bold it is. It makes a great texture and taste contrast with the usual dogs out there.
It’s an interesting choice, but not one I would have made because of that.
I think if I did this, I’d have to do a side by side with and without the chips. The difference isn’t going to be massive, but it could be enough to shift the enjoyment level.
Now, chips on a dog is something I’ve done before. Plenty of times, actually. That crunch, and the mild flavor do indeed help cut through some flavors. But, typically, that’s going to be most desirable with things like simple condiments and maybe a bit of relish.
You know, a bit of mustard and/or ketchup is a good basic dog. You then add a little something extra to kick it up a notch without killing the simplicity of it. Some crumbled chips, even if it’s a pile on the plate and you dip into it (which is my preferred way with simple dogs), and it changes things just enough that each of the individual flavors gets separated and then melds on the tongue.
Ehhhh, to a limited extent, Christmas movies. But it’s only partly so it doesn’t get diluted, it’s also because they’re kind of meant to be something to make the season a bit happier. They don’t work as well outside of the holidays, so why bother?