Following Through on My Recipe Promise

So, I'm posting again just 2 days since my last post! Woo-hoo, er, I guess that's good. Who knows.....

In any event, before I get into any cooking details I'd like to provide some (unneeded) free advertising for the iPhone. Apple announced their new OS (that's an operating system to you and I.) that is going to be pushed out this summer. They claim to have over 100 new features / improvements. I looked through it and it mostly looked like obvious things that aren't earth-shattering (multi-media texts, copy/paste functionality, a map API that will let someone build a turn-by-turn GPS application, which I will immediately buy), but to me this just shows why the iPhone is so awesome. Apple comes up with a great idea, and then doesn't eff it up with stupidity. They make it easy for external developers to build applications so that they don't have to come up with all the great ideas on their own, and they add the stuff that people want. An iPhone will change your life. And that's coming from a guy that only has access to his phone about 6 hours a day (subtracting work and sleep).

Anyway, this is the 1st of 3 recipes I plan to provide shortly. One might call this the 'holy pork trilogy', or something dumb like that.....

Southern Peach Pork Chops

(This recipe comes from 'Grill It!' by Good Housekeeping)

(Technically the recipe also says you should cut 4 peaches in half, cover them in peach jam, and grill them for 5 minutes. In my opinion, this is a just great way to ruin a peach.)

What you need:

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

pinch of black pepper

1 garlic clove (pressed)

4 pork chops

1/2 cup peach jam (or apricot jam)

1. Fire up your grill to medium heat
2. Stir curry powder, brown sugar, oil, salt cinnamon, pepper, and garlic in a bowl until blended. Rub this mixture onto both sides of each pork chop
3. Spread some of the peach jam onto ONE side of the pork chops
4. Place chops on the grill, jam side UP for ~5 minutes
5. Turn chops and then spread jam onto them - grill ~5 minutes
6. Repeat previous step, but only grill for another 2-3 minutes

Tips based on my experience:

• Go heavy on the '1 tbsp of olive oil'. That rub mixture is kinda hard to work with, in my opinion.
• Be quick on the 1st turn of the pork chops. 4 minutes is probably enough
• Be slow on the 2nd turn (~6 minutes). I think the fact that initially the bottom side has no jam makes it cook faster than after you make the turn.
• I'm not really sure that step #6 is even necessary. But in the end you're just putting more jam on, so I guess it's hard to make an argument that this is a bad thing.

Try it.

You're welcome. :-)

Re-thinking my Blog Posting Goals

I apparently am incapable of a weekly blog. Either my life moves too fast to make time each week, or my life is too boring to justify a weekly post. Anyway, I'm officially retracting any stated goal for timely publication. I'll just blog whenever the heck I manage to set aside 20 minutes AND have something reasonably interesting to say.....

Short Ramblings

• I spent the week in the Ft. Walton Beach, FL, area for work, and it was incredibly foggy. Being a midwesterner boy, I have no idea if this is normal beachfront behavior. But it was 80 degrees everyday, so that was nice.
• I spent an extra BONUS night in Atlanta because we (everyone that flies in the US) have an air traffic control problem. I have some choice words for the airline industry as a whole, but I'll hold back and just say "wowzy woo-woo, you guys should not suck so bad".
• I went to 2 different driving ranges today - BOTH CLOSED! (*confused*)
• My still unnamed sweeping slave (the iRobot Roomba) is an awesome gizmo. I eagerly await the arrival of my SlapChop....
• 'Spring' Oreos are, for some mysterious reason, noticeably tastier than normal Oreos
• I took my nerd-dom to another level this week and put a wood-grain skin on my trendy little netbook laptop. At least I'm amused by it....

My Bowling Career is Launching

I normally wouldn't share too many bowling details, as that's not what I'd call 'riveting material'. But since I already embarassed myself I might as well let you in on the fun too.

I bowled the series of my life 2 weeks ago - 710 (scratch)! I had a 235 the 1st game, then ALMOST bowled 300. I had a spare in the 2nd frame and strikes in every other frame........until the 3 ball of the 10th frame when I unceremoniously threw a gutter ball. Ouch. I think that seriously may have been the 1st time in the history of man that someone bowled a 270 and threw their last ball straight into the gutter. Apparently the pressure of the 'pizza and beer' league was more than I could handle. But I did recover to throw a 205 the 3rd game to reach my final tally.

I intended to post a grilling recipe on here, but got distracted by the drama of an eBay auction (I'm patiently stalking a playstation 3). I'll toss the recipe up next time I blog.