The Adventures of LitBoy: Bill Brent's Blog

Happy Bloggiversary, and Bon Appetit!

Hail, readers! This week marks the one-year anniversary of the LitBoy.com blog. Since I started last January 7 with a recipe -- well, actually, since by complete coincidence, I had to get creative today with scrounging the cabinets and fridge for something tasty -- here is a new recipe.

You can click on the "Food and Drink" category tab in the left column to see the others. I'm not a pro cook by a long shot (we'll skip the post where I blew up a cake last year), but once in a while, I knock one out of the park. In fact, I'm still in post-prandial bliss as I am typing this, so I just had to share this one with you. And it's SO easy. All of my quantities are approximations, since that's how I cook. Lots of easy substitutions, too. Enjoy!

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BILL BRENT'S LEMON CHICKEN RICE

INGREDIENTS:

- 1 qt. chicken stock (I like Wolfgang Puck's, the kind in the box.)

- 1-1/2 to 2 c. regular white rice (I like medium grain milled; the brand I'm using today is Fukusuke. No, honest, I could not make up a name like that.)

- 1 to 2 carrots, sliced into apx. 1/3" slices (I used a handful or so of the pre-washed chunks in the plastic bag.)

- apx. ¼ c. raw onion, cubed (This time, I used part of a large red onion I had left over in the fridge.)

- 1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil, if desired, for consistency

- apx. 12 oz. chicken breast, UNDRAINED (I like Kirkland brand canned premium chunk from Costco.)

- 1 juicy, pulpy lemon (I used a 2" midsection chunk of a giant Meyer's lemon —you will use both juice AND pulp for this.)

DIRECTIONS:

Bring the chicken stock to a boil in a 6-qt. (or reasonable equivalent) pot. Add the sliced carrots and diced onion while it is heating. Let them boil in the broth for a minute or two before adding the rice and optional olive oil. Stir, reduce the heat to low, and cover the pot. Cook for 15 mins. of 25 total mins.

Apx. 10 mins. before the rice completes, remove lid and stir the rice & vegs. Add the chicken breast, incl. the broth.* Add the lemon juice and pulp, and stir the pot again.

Allow the ingredients to finish cooking, uncovered. If things look a bit too soupy for your taste, you can allow for a bit of extra time or bump up the heat a bit. Remove from heat, stir, and serve.


* If you have used chicken without broth (e.g., cooked fresh or frozen instead of canned), you can add an ounce or so of broth (or salt water with an extra tablespoon of olive oil) as substitute for the missing broth.

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[--Speaking of anniversaries, it's time to re-set the money meter back to zero. If you like this blog and can help support my work as a writer, please consider a donation. Details below, or just use the Tip Jar at the top left corner of this page.--]

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.1.11, 5:55 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

0.00 / $199.90 (0.0%)

Recipe for Last Night's Dinner

BB's OMFG Spaghetti-Chili Amazement

[This is based loosely on Cincinnati Chili, which is sometimes called a Five-Way. And you don't have to use spaghetti for pasta — I didn't.]

one fresh chopped small to medium red onion
    (and fresh chopped garlic, if desired)
one package of chopped mushrooms
    (I like a straw-type mushroom. like Enoki.)
olive oil
red wine vinegar

1 lb. 93% lean ground beef
one approx. 15 oz. jar of finely diced tomatoes
    (Del Monte makes a good one called Garden Select)
one approx. 15 oz. jar of sliced tomatoes
    (Del Monte, again, or equivalent)
two small cans or one large can of tomato sauce, approx. 15 oz. total
one approx. 15 oz. can of kidney beans
salt
red and black pepper
two to three tbsp. of cinnamon

pasta (I like spiral pasta for this –
    12 oz. Golden Grain rainbow rotini works well)
grated Parmesan
grated Romano cheese

Begin by sautéing the red onion in olive oil using a skillet (I use a big cast-iron skillet) until the onion starts to clear. Turn frequently enough to keep the onion from burning. Add the mushrooms, including the long stems, if you are using Enoki or a similar variety. Also add the garlic, if desired. Add a few dashes of red wine vinegar throughout, any time you want to keep the vegetables from browning too fast.

Set aside the sautéed contents of the skillet. Brown the ground beef in the skillet. When the beef finishes, drain if desired, then return to the skillet. Add all of the tomato products and the kidney beans. I like to chop up the sliced tomatoes a bit with the edge of the spatula. Add back the onion and mushroom sauté, along with the salt and spices, mix it all together, and cook over low heat for about an hour, or until the sauce reduces to the desired consistency.

Boil your pasta, drain, and serve with the sauce. Top with the grated cheeses, and enjoy!

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.09.22, 9:10 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

80.99 / $199.90 (40.5%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

NOVEL-WRITING LOG: 8 days and counting

It has been a strange week.

Last night I blew up a cake.

I'm really grateful that the glass from the pan did not explode into my eye or cut me anywhere except for this one small nick below my left thumb. It bled a bit through the Band-Aid last night, but has been fine today.

Every few times I use the stove, I misread the confusing symbols on the range top, and turn on the wrong burner by mistake. Last night I was trying to heat up some rice I cooked up Saturday to use as a base for the Sloppy Joe mix I'd just fixed. I had the cake cooling on the front burner and the rice cooking on the back, or so I thought. Three minutes into frosting the sheet of cake (still in the glass pan, which is how I intended to serve and store it), the whole thing exploded practically in my face, sending shards of blue Corning glass into every corner of the kitchen.

So hubby, bless him, swept and mopped while I fixed my bleeding hand. We didn't want the cat getting a sliver in his paw. So with dinner totally ruined, and the house filled with the smell of burnt cake, I opened all the windows and took us out for Mexican. It was a great idea.

I won't bother with the rest of the week because most of its "strangeness" is nothing I can resolve anytime soon. Suffice to say that I'm doing a lot of work on "old business" (grief, really) that will no doubt manifest one day in the form of a novel or two. My sleep patterns have been really erratic this past week, which I'm pretty certain is related low-level depression. Lots of extra napping with insomnia at night. It seems to be behind me for now.

The exploding cake blew it all out of my system anyhow. Sometimes I think we need a shock to the solar plexus to knock us out of our heads and back into the present. While I don't recommend this cake-exploding technique [Danger, Will Robinson!], it seemed to work for me, because today I have been full of energy, fully focused on the present, and going great guns on the right-brain novel. I think I'll have some semblance of a first draft by my birthday on July 17.

Or I could blame the coffee. Last Monday, I'd cut back coffee to half a cup per day, and since Tuesday or Wednesday, I haven't had any coffee at all ... until this morning. Yes, I got a lot done today, but I think it may have been in spite of rather than because of the caffeine. It did wire me, and it did make me edgy, but since I knew the edginess was caffeine-induced, it didn't really bother me.

I had a great chat today with my writing coach, who is fairly convinced (as am I) that the publishing industry in the U.S. is headed for a major overhaul at the grass-roots level, since the system is working for fewer and fewer of us all the time. Even the major publishers don't put any time, money, or energy behind their new books anymore, just the one or two "sure things" each season. Well, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? I mean, let's ignore those other books and make sure that they don't have a chance.

Anyhow, I spent most of today compiling an outline of the right-brain novel. I realized during my walk early this morning (to work off all that left-over bloat from last night's trip out for Mexican food) that I couldn't just keep writing into the abyss anymore. So now I am sequencing all these vignettes into connected chains of events. It's like, I've thrown all this paint at the wall, so now it's time to start blending these blobs of color into something that works as a composition. So I did a fair amount of that today as well. I will continue reading through the novel tomorrow and see what else I can come up with. After that, I will fill in the missing gaps as per this outline, and voila, first draft.

Bill's Left-Brain Novel,
as of July 9, 2007:

69,885 / 90,000 (77.7%) [basically unchanged]

Bill's Right-Brain Novel,
as of July 9, 2007:

28,466 / 50,000 (56.9%)

Just a reminder that my birthday is on the 17th of this month, and that's my self-imposed deadline for the first draft of at least one of these muthas.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.07.09, 10:05 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

43.55 / $199.90 (21.8%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

"JUST SAY NO" TO GOVERNMENT CHOCOLATE! (update)

UPDATE: The FDA has EXTENDED ITS DEADLINE to June 25 for filing a comment on the proposed changes to food labeling standards in the USA, including but not limited to chocolate.

You can find further information by clicking HERE ... and HERE . This is additional background from the blog of the author of the L.A. Times article.

 

You can CLICK HERE for a new article on the subject in the April 27 Washington Post.

You can also CLICK HERE for my original post on the topic.

[this page last updated: 2007.04.30, 4:15 p.m. Hawaii time]

As always, thanks for reading this blog.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $199 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

40 / 199 (20.2%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution within 24 hours.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

"JUST SAY NO" TO GOVERNMENT CHOCOLATE!

Have you heard of "government cheese"? As is often the case with street-level reality, you have to read between the lines, which means that you more or less ignore the dictionary definitions and take it to the street. Well, I'm here on a remote Hawaiian island, so that's not a real option for me, but I'll aim as close as I can. I like definition number two in the Urban Dictionary (which at this writing has forty-three thumbs up and sixteen thumbs down):

(copied from: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=government+cheese)

A BIG, HARD MASS; A BLOCK OF ORANGE-YELLOW PROCESSED "USDA CHEESE FOOD" ISSUED BY "DA GUBMENT" United States GOVERNMENT to aid needy families by supplementing their food resources. Used for making Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Macaroni & Cheese but ALSO CAUSES severe, bowel obstructing constipation, silent but deadly stinky gas, and / or "the runs" diarrhea in those who are lactose intolerant.

[example: I just got some Government Cheese, but I'm not gonna make a grill cheese sandwich cause it gave me the runs last time I ate it.]

Now I'm going to send you off to do a bit of reading, but please come right back — it'll only take you a minute or so:

Hands off my chocolate, FDA!

So here's my point: As usual, it'll probably be the poorest people who get stuck with much of this shyte because they are the most likely target for sales and surplus (read: unwanted) food, and the least likely to be informed as to what they're getting. Government cheese all over again.

Yet we will all be tricked into eating non-chocolate because this is an attempt to call it "chocolate." In other words, the industry wants the government to grant permission to LIE to us about what we're eating. Got it?

This current ploy by these non-citizens is yet another attempt to degrade public life by those least likely to live in the midst of it. Don't put up with it!

If you've got time to read this article, then you've got time to file a complaint with the Food & Drug Administration ("FDA"). It only takes five minutes, and you can do it through the Guittard Chocolate website. Let's clog the arteries of the FDA's email pipeline until they tell the industry to keep its chocolate-pickin' HANDS OFF OUR CHOCOLATE. We're the ones who stand in line to pay for the stuff — let's keep it real.

Here's the all-important URL:

click HERE

PLEASE DO IT NOW — THE DEADLINE FOR CITIZEN COMMENTS IS THIS WEDNESDAY! APRIL 25! EXTENDED TO JUNE 25, 2007. (I will post any follow-up information here on this blog: www.LitBoy.com. Just click on the subject tab "chocolate" in the left sidebar to see any updates.)

If you can fax, then why not send the FDA a fax, too, just to make an even bigger stink about how much this cheesy plan stinks: 1-301-827-6870.

Thanks for reading this.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

UPDATE: You can find further information by clicking HERE ... and HERE. This is additional background from the blog of the author of the L.A. Times article.

[this page last updated: 2007.04.30, 3:18 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $179 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

31 / 179 (17.2%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution within 24 hours.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

TEMPEST IN A COFFEE POT

This essay's inspiration is an email that a friend forwarded to me, in which the sender (whom I'll call "the raver") protests this website:

MethCoffee.com

...which includes this video:

Meth Coffee Commercial

The objection was the "blatant attempt to link coffee to speed" (duh), which the raver found "disturbing and disgusting," based on "first-hand experiences with seeing the effects of meth."

Poor dear.

Actually, in terms of sheer gross-out factor, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's

anti-meth site is far more disturbing:

Faces of Meth

...because it's real.

The poster was entreating others on the list to email the owners of Meth Coffee with a message stating, "Meth isn't funny." (In the interest of fair-mindedness, here is the address if you want to give those bean-pushers a piece of your mind:)

Meth Coffee -- Contact

OK, now, there is a vast distinction between the image of meth being used to sell coffee, and a message that promotes or even normalizes meth use. (Would you want to be that guy in the video?) Unfortunately, the raver conflates the two, and thus raver's mini-campaign smacks of someone with a personal agenda making an appeal to "right-minded citizens" in the interest of "the public good."

Meth Coffee's website is a case of satirical marketing. One of the points of satire is that it's humor with a sarcastic bite. Sarcasm is used to sell many things (here's an example: JimGoad.net), and it's supposed to hurt a bit. If it weren't based on an uncomfortable truth, it wouldn't be satire, right? Remember Wacky Packages? Actually, they're back, and they're still big. Wacky Packages are satirical representations of existing consumer products, and the most successful lampoons are the ones that come closest to commenting on the actual product, such as CRAM canned meat product, Horrid spray deodorant, Rice-A-Phoni, the Monotony board game, Raw Goo Spaghetti Sauce, and Kook Cigarettes.

Satire is one of my sacred cows, even though it's the anti-Cow, if you will. I am oxymoronic by nature. Irony might as well be my middle name ... and if there's one thing I have little indulgence for, it's the literal-mindedness of individuals like the raver who take the fun, folly, and sacred foolishness out of life. Heaven knows how much tasteless advertising most of us confront on most days of the year anyhow, and at least methcoffee.com is doing it on purpose. With a vengeance, even. I respect the intelligence behind that campaign, just as I appreciate the shock value behind the "Faces of Meth" concept, the "FUCK YOU!" aspect of Jim Goad's ad promoting his book, and the satire of product packaging embodied in the Wacky Packages line. They are all way over the top.

For the record, I have had a problem with meth use, and I didn't feel threatened or offended by this website. I thought it was a hilarious send-up of the speed-freak culture, which most of us deride anyhow. You know what the twelve-steppers in my little backwoods town used to call coffee? "Christian Crank."

(Crank, for the uninformed, is a form of speed, generally the less refined, brown and powdery version. And practically everyone I met at my former town's chapter of Narcotics Anonymous was there to stay off speed. A fresh pot of coffee was a mandatory fixture at every NA meeting I attended -- in fact, I heard the joke from a crazy old twelve-stepper who was refilling his cup.)

I won't knock anyone else's recovery process. Everyone has to get off drugs in their own inimitable style, and I'm sure we all have "triggers," some more obvious than others. Nor do I wish to deny the emotional pain of seeing a loved one succumb to addiction -- I've been there, too. But, if anything, the Meth Coffee ad campaign makes a case for the absurdity of speed-addicted behavior. So, whether the raver is a former user, a current user, or just trying to be supportive, I object to the projection of personal issues onto others. In other words, I think this person has some work to do before getting out the hook. And don't we all? We are most likely to control others when we lose our sense of humor about ourselves.

In that spirit, here are some product names I dreamed up while thinking my way through this issue:

 

Heroin Chocolates

Cocaine Soda (whoops, that's been done)

Ecstasy Bread (as opposed to Wonder Bread)

Psilocybin Sugar

Hashish Lipstick

Mescaline Tortilla Chips

Crack-Whore Nail Polish

Amyl Air Freshener

Sex Addict Disposable Douche

Nicotine Candy (whoops, that's been done, too, under various names)

Try making up some of your own, if you like -- it's fun.

 

Any time you start placing restrictions on what is and isn't "permissible" language, you give increasing power to the "taboo" words anyhow, and you are, however subtly, encouraging a form of politically correct thought control that is unhealthy and undesirable in a free-thinking society -- and in ours, too.

Once More, With Garlic

 

Greetings, and welcome to my blog! My name is Bill Brent, and I live in the Hawaiian rainforest, where there are mosquitoes aplenty and I am their favorite food. So I have been finding new and creative ways to consume garlic since, according to one friend, this is an effective way to ward off mosquitoes. However, I tend to be a rather lazy cook. Here is one of my favorite easy recipes.

Bill Brent's Bean Salad Three-Way

Better than sex? How about a close second, at least?

INGREDIENTS:

- 1 can kidney beans

- 1 can garbanzo beans

- 1 can cut green beans*

- chopped raw onion to taste (red or yellow)

- minced raw garlic to taste

- approx. 8 oz. or 2/3 bottle vinaigrette-style salad dressing * *
    OR olive oil and red wine vinegar, seasoned to taste (I like lots of dill weed and a bit of oregano.)

DIRECTIONS:

Combine ingredients into a bowl. You may wish to rinse the canned beans in a colander first, especially the kidney beans if the "juice" is particularly slimy. Then cover, refrigerate, and allow to marinate overnight. I recommend that you stir the contents once or twice during the marination process. Marination takes the edge off the onion and garlic. Spoon into bowls, allowing to drain (a slotted spoon works well for this), and enjoy!

NOTES:

* When I have the time, I prefer fresh green beans. Cut the beans, then steam for about 5 minutes; allow them to cool (an ice water bath speeds up the process); then drain and add to the other ingredients.

* * This time around, I used Girard's Greek Feta Vinaigrette. Yum.

There are countless variations on the traditional recipe. It is easy to come up with your own additions (or substitutions, depending on dietary needs). Here are several of my favorites:

- cooked, drained, and crumbled bacon

- chilled and diced fresh Roma tomato

- any grated dry cheese, such as Parmesan, Romano, or Feta