Eddie Forces A Smile Friday

"Will you please just give me a smile??!!" I asked.

THIS is what I get.


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1 YEAR AGO: A, B, C, D, DD: No Matter What The Letter, The Trauma Is The Same
2 YEARS AGO: How To Watch American Idol The Right Way
3 YEARS AGO: Dings And Ho’s

Some Like It Hot

While sitting around Seattle waiting for Ed to load the truck, I made a pot of my father's chili. Ed hasn't had it yet and I thought it would be a nice meal for the rainy day we were experiencing (What?? Rain in Seattle?). Up above is the picture as it cooked, down below is the recipe if you'd like to try it.


Sal’s Chili

THE STORY
My father owned a hot dog cart in New York for 16 years. One of the most requested items he sold was the chili topping for his hot dogs. Its most identifying characteristic was its heat. That was my father’s “thing” with the chili – making it super freaking hot. People came to his cart specifically for this hot chili, even bringing friends along to try it.

He always made sure to tell everyone straight out that it was EXTREMELY hot. He'd even offer samples to people who weren't sure they'd like it or thought it might be too hot. After tasting it, many people would pass, especially women. Men would square their shoulders and puff out their chests, showing their manly ability to eat anything, and just order away. Often they would be seen with their jaws hung open, huffing air and downing a cold soda moments after their first bite, giving relief to their mouth.

You can adjust the heat to your preference and it’ll be just as good. I usually figure, when I make it for most people, one habanero pepper per pound of meat. If I were making it for my hot dog cart, I’d add more. Also, when my father and I made it for our hot dog carts, we did NOT add kidney beans. I only add kidney beans if I’m planning to serve it in a bowl, as a meal (with cornbread on the side!). As a meal, it’s best not to be so hot but on a hot dog, the fire just adds to the experience!

THE INGREDIENTS
2 lbs. Chop Meat (80-85% lean – some fat in the chili makes it taste better)
1 large onion (diced)
9 cloves of garlic (minced)
3 habanero peppers (minced)
3 jalapeno peppers (diced – you can use 3 fresh or you can use jarred – just dice)
1 can dark red kidney beans
2 cans diced or whole tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1 tablespoon of sugar
Salt & Pepper
Olive Oil

THE PROCESS
1. In a large stock pot, coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil and start to brown the chop meat. I do one pound at a time and I break the meat up with a wooden spoon into little pieces, leaving a few chunks in the mix. You don’t have to fully cook it because it will cook more later, but make sure it’s browned.

2. While the meat is browning, prepare the garlic, onion, habaneros and jalapenos and set aside. NOTE: When handling habaneros, it’s best to use gloves. I wear thin, latex gloves for this. Even touching the outside of the pepper and getting its oil on your hands can result in burning your eyes or lips or whatever if you happen to rub your eye or touch your mouth after handling the pepper. Once you cut them open and expose the seeds, be just as careful with that. Be aware not to rub your face or mouth or eyes until you are done handling the peppers.

3. When the meat is close to done, take the meat out and put it into a bowl on the side. Leave the fat from the meat in the bottom of the stock pot.

4. Now in that stock pot, using the fat from the meat, sauté your garlic and onions. Do NOT burn these, cook only until they are sizzling and translucent.

5. Once that is done, put the meat back in the pot and add your cans of tomatoes and tomato paste. If you’re using whole tomatoes, crush them with your hand as you put them in the pot. Use the larger tomato can to add one can of water to the pot.

6. Now add your habaneros and jalapenos. The reason I dice the jalapenos and mince the habaneros is because of the habaneros heat. If you get too big a piece of habanero in your spoonful of chili, it’s too hot. Mincing it allows the heat to disperse through the entire pot of chili.

7. Add a tablespoon of sugar (a little more if you like it sweet – I do) and salt and pepper. Usually, as with everything I make since I don’t measure, is just to sprinkle a light layer of seasoning across the whole pot. Then I stir it all in.

8. Bring the whole pot to a boil (it won’t really boil like water, but it will bubble) and keep stirring so it doesn’t stick to the pot.

9. Cook a minimum of one hour, more if you want it to be thicker. The longer you cook, the more reduced it will become and the thicker the chili will be.

10. Enjoy!

Click HERE for the printable version of the recipe.


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1 YEAR AGO: The Desert Blooms With Irritants
2 YEARS AGO: Squeeze Me?
3 YEARS AGO: Relationship Deal Breakers

Pink In Tacoma

I spent the early morning hours with coffee and a blueberry scone at the Barnes and Noble in Tacoma, Washington. When I left and was walking back to the truck, I spied an entire tree blooming in the sunshine. This little beauty stood still long enough for me to snap its picture.

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1 YEAR AGO: Not The Kind Of Flower You Pick
2 YEARS AGO: Exclusive Holiday Visitation
3 YEARS AGO: Basket Of Knowledge

Unwatchable

I know there are those of you out there who will probably praise the movie Watchmen. I don't know who you people are. And you know what? I don't want to know who you people are. I hope never to meet you or be sucked into a conversation by you.

I don't even want to know why you liked the movie. Well, that's not entirely true. I would actually like to know why you liked it, just to see if I can identify all of you by some like characteristic so I'll know who to stay very far away from. Perhaps you all have an earlobe that hangs low on one side, or the third finger of your left hand is an inch shorter than all the others or maybe you wear t-shirts that say "I Like Stupid Movies".

Finding out why you liked the movie would mean I'd have to talk to you about it and likely, you'd recount your favorite part or line or character, and then I would have to risk having an aneurysm all over again. That I can't do because I already lost three hours of my life this week. Three hours that I'll likely never make up. Three hours of time that will never be erased from my brain, images seared into it that will take years and years to forget. I might even need therapy.

There are not enough words in the English language (or all languages combined) to express the level of SUCK this movie rose to. I don't even want to type the string of expletives I used to describe what I thought about it, the time I wasted and the fact that I sat through the entire thing, because if I did, this post would not only be NSFW (not safe for work), it would also be NSFS (not safe for sailors).

Once again though, I chose to accompany my very cute, very loving boyfriend to a movie of his choice. Why, you ask? Why did I do this once again, after I've done it in the past and regretted my decision? I wish I could say it was because I'm a dumbass and didn't intelligently think it out. But that's not true.

I did think it out (albeit for a split second). I did it because honestly, he does SO much for me. I initially said no, knowing I would hate it, but then he asked me again. So I gave in. I thought, Okay, it's got Jeffrey Dean Morgan in it. I loved him in Grey's Anatomy and PS I Love You. He's really cute. How bad can it be?

That phrase, "how bad can it be?", should never be uttered. Because if you're even thinking about how bad it could be, then something is definitely telling you to stay away.

LISTEN TO YOUR INNER VOICE.

Because not everyone has the t-shirt.


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1 YEAR AGO: Nesting
2 YEARS AGO: The Quickest Way To Get Ready For A Nap
3 YEARS AGO: One Stop Shopping

Waiting For The Storm In Ohio

Storm clouds hovering over farmland in Ottawa, Ohio.

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1 YEAR AGO: Sprawl
2 YEARS AGO: Moonlighting
3 YEARS AGO: Spring Breath Escapes Through Two Lips

Straight Out Of The Box

Me, Sunday morning, right after I got ready for "work".

Not quite the straight out of bed shot, but it is straight out of the camera; no adjustments, no Photoshop, nothing but cropping. The background is a little dark because I didn't use a flash, just the light from above the kitchen sink. As you can see, I'm standing directly under it.

Criminy, I say! Looking at the creases on my forehead, I might have to be getting those Botox injections sooner than I anticipated!

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1 YEAR AGO: Unreal Ideal
2 YEARS AGO: Stealing Isn’t Always A Bad Thing
3 YEARS AGO: 04 05 06

Petal Tips Of Spring And New Life

Today I saw my twin cousins, a boy and a girl, for the very first time. At just a smidge over five pounds each and smaller than a loaf of Italian bread, they were delicious. Not in the Italian bread way, in the yummy baby way. I cried when handed the first one to hold.

It's impossible not to know there is something out there so much greater than us when you see two beautiful babies cradled in your hands. These tulips with their variegated colors bleeding into each other, also a product of a power greater than us, are almost as beautiful, but not nearly as amazing.

Looking at those babies, I just can't believe my cousin and his wife made them. They MADE a person. I mean, I know all about the birds and the bees and all that, but every time I see a newborn, I'm just in awe. I couldn't stop looking at them. And at only two weeks old, it's nice to think they were actually looking back at me, but I know they were just seeing a big, blobby shadow hovering over them.

Which I guess means their eyesight is pretty good.

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1 YEAR AGO: Eddie In Hawaiian Garb Friday
2 YEARS AGO: New Floridork?
3 YEARS AGO: Boogie Down Bronx

Eddie At The Glacier Friday

Here we have a picture of my Eddie filling our drinking water jugs for the truck. We keep about six gallons in the truck; three of these small gallon jugs and then one big three gallon jug. Did you know water weighs about 8.35 pounds?

I suppose the average person doesn't really need to know how much water weighs, but in the truck, every gallon counts. Because the truck has a legal weight cap; 80,000 pounds.

Now a few gallons of water shouldn't make much difference you'd think when you have 80,000 pounds of weight to play with, but when you have a 40 gallon water tank, 7 gallons of flush water and 6 gallons of drinking water, you're carrying approximately 442 pounds of extra weight. That can make or break you at the scale house.

So, in addition to figuring how many gallons of fuel we have (diesel fuel weighs about 7.3 pounds per gallon, resulting in 1,606 pounds when our tanks are full), we also need to know how much water weight we're carrying.

See - neurotic women aren't the only one who worry about carrying extra water weight; truck drivers do it too.

"Hey buddy, do my ankles look swollen to you? I think I may be retaining water."


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1 YEAR AGO: When Having A UTI Is A Cause For A Celebration
2 YEARS AGO: They Should Give Academy Awards For Good Hair
3 YEARS AGO: One, Two, Three, Floor

E Pluribus Unum

As Ed and I ate dinner at the port in Jersey City, New Jersey (not by choice, we were stuck there due to gross incompetence on the parts of many people whose fingers were in the pie of our load) we watched a little television to accompany my fine cooking.

As we channel surfed, we found several languages represented in the local stations. Italian (Raitalia TV), Korean (KBS World), Spanish (Univision and others) and we think some other Asian channel we couldn't identify.

New York truly embodies E pluribus unum; Latin for "Out of Many, One." It's in the collage of faces and the symphony of voices. Everyone fits and everyone adds something unique with their instrument. Even within the confines of the trucking industry, you will notice it; especially at the ports. In one afternoon, you'll see everything from a Punjabi Sikh with a turban, to a Jamaican Rasta with dreadlocks, to a tiny Chinaman so slight you think he'd be better suited to be a jockey than a truck driver.

When I was younger, there was a kid from Honduras who worked at our family restaurant. He learned most of the English he knew from watching television, which is probably the reason why every time he opened his mouth, he sounded like either a commercial or a sitcom. But he learned. And he prospered. And he was very, very happy to participate in the American life he created, even if he did it in broken English. The mixture of his Spanish and English was part of his charm. I wonder if I would become more charming if I sat around watching Raitalia TV? Forse.

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1 YEAR AGO: The Dance In Their Heads, Hands And Feet
2 YEARS AGO: The Love Buffet
3 YEARS AGO: Whadya Think This Is, The Waldorf?

Shouting From The Rooftops

Well, not really a rooftop, more like a cushy passenger seat. Anyhoo, I always love a good web site find. I'm a bit of an Internet junkie and since I spend so much time online, I often stumble across a great site or someone passes it on to me. Once I know about it, I have to immediately notify everyone in my inner circle and of course, you lucky readers! (Half of whom are already in my inner circle. Ahem.)

So, here are a few of my favorites. Some of them are helpful in the trucking aspect, but others are just plain 'ol useful.

Weatherbase: This is just fun. Planning a vacation? Don't know where you want to go? Plug in your information and preferences and get some ideas.

Hazelmail: Love postcards? Don't love the ones that they sell in tourist shops? Make your own! And Hazel will send it for you.

Goodreads: Sometimes a pain in the ass to update, especially if you're a voracious reader (uh, like Michelle), but it's a cool way to keep up with friends and what they're reading, in addition to getting suggestions.

U.S. Naval Observatory: We use this when we're running an over-dimensional load and you're only allowed to travel during daylight hours. Most loads that require this type of permit allow you to start driving a half-hour before sunrise to a half-hour after sunset. So this helps to know when twilight begins and ends.

Tastebook: I'm not sure you know this, but I love Oprah. Moreover, I love Oprah's Favorite Things. So when I saw this in last year's Christmas issue of my Oprah magazine, I thought wow, what a genius idea! Oprah always finds the coolest stuff. You can make your own cookbook by combining youre own recipes with those from friends and family. No more recipes written on the back of paper plates or saved in your email in-box. And now I won't have to sneak into Garnett's house in the middle of the night and steal the highly valued box of her mother's recipes. She just saved me from a life in the big house!

Tiny URL: This one is great. If you don't know about it, you should. Ever want to send a friend a link but it has more letters than War and Peace? Use Tiny URL. So small, you can text it.

RefDesk: I love this site for too many reasons to list. Go there.

VRBO: Vacation Rentals By Owner. Want to go on vacation but don't want to stay in a hotel? Find people here who rent their personal homes, vacation homes, city apartments, beach cottages, etc. There are locations all over the globe!

Festivals.com: Have a free weekend but don't know what you want to do? Check out this web site for all sorts of festivals and events going on all over the country. You can search by category, keywords, zip code, dates. Don't be surprised if you see an festival you never even knew existed!

Coin Laundry Association: This site comes in very handy for us. I don't like doing my laundry at the truck stop - most of the time, they don't have enough machines and I'm don't want to be sitting there enduring the glare of a driver that needs to wash his coveralls and a few pairs of socks while I'm folding my sixth load. This site allows me to plug in a zipcode and find a place with all the washers my little heart desires!

MoMA Store: The Museum of Modern Art store has some of the most unique items I've ever seen. Need to transport a banana? They have a way. Get lost on the way to the kitchen for a midnight snack? never again. And when a whole scissor is just too much for the job? There's this. I'm sure you can find something here and think how cool you'll be giving a gift that someone can't go to the local Walmart and find themselves. You can thank me later.

And finally, something so delicious I just couldn't pass it up:

Bacolicious: In the mood for a slice of bacon? How about slapping that bacon on a web site to send your friend? What? You've never considered it? Well it's about time to start. Click on the link, follow the directions and slap some bacon on someone!


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As this is the first of the month (and no, this is not an April Fool's joke) I am going to add a new feature to my posts. At the end of each one, I'll be linking to posts from years past. It will allow you to see what was going on in years past and you'll be able to delve into the archives a little at a time, without having to start from the very beginning. Click to enjoy!

1 YEAR AGO: View From Fifteen
2 YEARS AGO: The Sun Before The Storm
3 YEARS AGO: This Is No Joke
4 YEARS AGO: There is no four yet because I started my blog in May 2005. So next month, you'll start seeing the "4 Years Ago" category.

I'll Get You My Pretty

I hate all cigarette smokers.

Well, unless you are my friends (Hags) or family (you know who you are).

Being a non-smoker all of my life, I find cigarette smoke to be very offensive. I know smokers will say to stay away from places with smokers, and for the most part I do. I don't like to go to bars, you will rarely find me in a pool hall, and if I have to be in a casino, I'm in the non-smokers room if they have one. If they don't, I shower Silkwood Style as soon as I get back to my hotel room.

But now they have electronic cigarettes. You heard me right. Electronic.

Boy, they're determined to get people smoking no matter how they do it, aren't they? Granted it doesn't produce the second hand smoke, which I like, and they claim it doesn't have the harmful tars and carcinogens of traditional cigarettes, but oddly, it still has the nicotine. Which is the highly addictive substance cigarettes contain.

Since I'm not a smoker, I'm not sure if this is going to be appealing. I mean, that's like me licking a plastic replica of a donut that tastes like my favorite Boston Cream donut from Dunkin', but doesn't deliver all the calories.

I'm not really sure that's gonna cut it.

No Need To Do Anything Drastic; There Will Always Be Re-Runs

In all its fifteen years, I've only seen a few episode of ER, but you'd have to be living under a rock to not know the series is coming to an end. Everyone knows the major players, even if they aren't weekly watchers.

For weeks now, I've been seeing the commercials advertising its final episode, and every time I see one, I'm on the verge of tears. I find myself saying, I didn't have a chance to watch! Wait! I don't want it to end! I don't want these people to go away! Tell me it isn't sooooooooooooooo. And I'm not even a fan!

Yet, it's happening. I can only imagine the many wrists that are going to be slit when that show ends. I have a feeling the ER's across America might be busy that night. That's kinda weird, huh?

I really hope these people have lined up something else to fill their Thursday nights.

If The Life Expectancy Of A White Male Is Over Seventy Five Years, You Have Plenty Of Time When You're Ten

Tonight Ed and I are sitting in Buttonwillow, California waiting to deliver our load tomorrow morning. He's working on our taxes, I'm doing something less "work" related...

Every month, I write a newsletter for my oldest nephew, who is ten years old. It's typically five pages and I include a "Place of The Month" category where I take a whole page to describe a place we've been in detail, along with any interesting facts or information about it. I always include pictures I've taken if I have them. Another category is called "Side Trip" which is just a column where I highlight something small about another place we've been - for instance, last month I did Venice Beach, California. One of the things I knew my nephew would be interested in was the fact that it was the place where Carroll Shelby opened his first Shelby manufacturing plant in 1964. It was at this location that he converted a stock Ford Mustang into a "gutsy, incredibly fast street-legal race car".

I have a column that highlights events of the month like holidays and birthdays, a column with trivia and jokes and a column titled "Ed Says" where Ed and I collaborate on a topic of the month. So far we've done "saving money", "practicing to improve your skills" and "being organized".

As I was working on this month's newsletter, I asked Ed for a topic idea for his column. He said, "How about cleanliness?" I was like, "Uh, NO. My sister-in-law is the cleanest person I know. You could smish food into her carpet and eat it; I don't think my nephews need ANY tips on how to stay clean."

So then he said, "Well, how about 'Life is Short'?"

I said, "Life is short? Baby, he's ten. Life is not short when you're ten."


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In the spirit of extending life, I'd like to wish a very Happy Birthday to my dear friend Nikki, who turned 34 today! Please visit her new blog to read about her and her amazing search and rescue dog, TBAA.

When You Need Your Hump Fixed, This Is The Place

Quartzsite, Arizona.

Eddie My Little Ex-Marine Friday

We hauled some freight over to Edwards Air Force Base in California and Ed was like a little kid looking at all the planes and equipment - he even went to the museum!

Copter

Edwards Air Force Base. Edwards, California.

A Peek Behind The Sacred Pantry Door

I was inspired to do this post by the Highway Hags five part Truckin Cribs tour. Of course, they showed you a whole lot more of their truck (which I might do in the future), but for right now I'm giving you a quick tour of my fabulous pantry. I know, who really gives shit, right? Well, too bad - this is what you get today.

When we got the truck, we had two hanging clothes closets, but with all the room I have I decided I just didn't need them. I asked Ed to make one of them into a pantry. So he put two shelves in, creating three separate areas for me to pack with goodies. The very top shelf, which you can’t see, holds my pots and some miscellaneous items. The two main shelves hold the good stuff.

I’ve highlighted 10 items that we always have on hand, but in the background, were you to dig a little deeper, you’d find peanut butter, grape soda (childhood favorite!), canned veggies, oatmeal, tuna, salsa, Mint Milano cookies, sugar, crushed tomatoes, soup, spices....I could probably whip up anything in thirty minutes - if I don't have it, I'm never far from the store!

Now for the tour...

1. At least 14 boxes of Barilla pasta – I can never run low for fear of going into withdrawals. I think Ed is sick of having macaroni for dinner, but this is what I grew up on!

2. Bottle of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup – a necessity for late night chocolate milk but also good for a chocolate fix if there is nothing else available – a little squirt in the mouth is like an intravenous feed.

3. Extra Virgin Olive Oil or EVOO as Rachael Ray likes to say. Another staple – wouldn’t be able to run my kitchen without it.

4. Ed’s necessary bag of chips. I never grew up eating chips – but he’s a white boy and apparently, white people have chips on the side of their sandwich. The only side we might have with our sandwich would be another meatball.

5. Our instant coffee selections for when we don’t want to brew a pot of regular or use the espresso machine. Folgers for Ed (they really do have flavor crystals!) and my favorite, General Foods International Italian Cappuccino.

6. Balsamic Vinegar – a salad staple for me, but great for making a balsamic reduction for chicken or pork and excellent on strawberries.

7. Crystal Light – if I must to drink water (ICK) it has to have something in it. We’re into the Strawberry/Banana/Orange right now (which really just tastes like strawberry) but I have too many favorite flavors to name.

8. You can’t see the box, but it’s Pillsbury Devil’s Food Cake mix. For when I must have a freshly baked cake.

9. Potatoes (duh) that are actually FROM Idaho! Bet you couldn’t tell that by just looking at them, could you? And yes, they really DO taste better.

10. Drinking water. We fill up the tank in the truck but only use that for showers and dishwashing. For coffee and drink mixes, I use the bottled stuff. Refills are only .35 a gallon at Walmart. Can’t beat that. Well, if you're paying for water that is.

A Bevy Of Pavo Cristatus

From what I found out via Google, Pavo Cristatus is the species name for this bird, commonly known as Indian Peafowl or the Blue Peafowl. What I didn't know is that only the males are actually called a Peacock. The female is a peahen and the babies are peachicks. A group of them are called a bevy.

Well yesterday at Murray Family Farms in Mettler, California, I got to see a bevy of them. I don't think I've seen anything so gorgeous. His iridescence reminded me of the photo of a Drake I took last year, but the richness of his colors blew that duck right out of the water!

There were at least ten of these blue peafowl, along with a few peahens roaming around as well. None of them displayed their plumes in true peacock "fan" fashion, but I did get to see them spread behind one of them as he took a little rest from being all beautiful. It's a little hard to see him through the fencing, but his "train" of tailfeathers was at least three feet long!

Come closer my friends and get a better look:

First The Poultry, Now This

Here we have another interesting item. Sort of like yesterday's bird, only yellow:

I picked it up and smelled it; citrusy. Skin like a lemon. Fingers like a mutant. No real fruit in it, just a big lump of rind is what it looked like. I had no idea what it was until I asked the girl that worked there.

 "Buddha's Hand," she said as she walked past me.

"Budatan?" I said. ""Buddha's HAND." she enunciated. That's the name of it.

 I won't say I think I know everything about cooking, but I was pretty sure I'd seen all there was to see in the regular grocery stores and farmer's markets of the United States.

I know other countries have exotic fruits, vegetables and food items that I don't know a thing about, but to see this at Murray Family Farms and be able to reach out and touch it without having to fly thousands of miles to China to do so, was kind of cool.

 Even if it did feel like I was holding hands with a mutant.

What The Hell Is This?

OK, this is a pretty creepy picture. I know it's a close up, but it doesn't get any better looking if you take a step back. Colorful for sure. Unusual, yes. Uncomfortable looking, definitely.

Now I know there are a lot of country folk out there who probably know what this is. I'm thinking a rooster or chicken, which just seems obvious to me, but what kind? And why the red growths like that? Do all of this type of bird have those? Is it a disease? Is it the Elephant Bird?

I know the Hags probably know, because not only are they brilliant, but they are also country girls. Please help. Also, please let me know if you knew what it was from the first picture, before you Googled.

Here's another shot just in case you wanted to see more of him/her/it: