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Chicken Caesar Supreme

OK, everyone is familiar with a Chicken Caesar salad, but let’s dress it up for this recipe entry.

First, barbeque the chicken with a healthy slathering of “Chicken and Rib” BBQ sauce, whichever you prefer. I like to use boneless, skinless chicken thighs as they keep their juices the best, especially when barbequed on the grill.

For several reasons that fill my bag of hammers quite often, I trim the thighs so they are extra lean and throw them into a bowl of BBQ sauce as I go. One hand trims, and the other mixes, ensuring the thighs are covered in sauce. If you have time to marinate, by all means, go ahead; otherwise, you can prep and go straight to the grill.

Usually, five minutes a side, flipping twice, will work quite well when cooking at high heat (our grill has two settings: off and firestorm).

Once cooked, let the chicken rest while you prepare your Caesar salad. A simple salad can be made with two baby romaine hearts and two tablespoons of your favorite Caesar dressing. Cut and chop the romaine into small pieces, add the Caesar dressing, and shake well. Dice the chicken and add it to the top of the salad (a pasta bowl works great for this).

Now for the “Supreme” part of the recipe. Get a medium to medium-large apple; you’ll need half for each serving. Did I mention this was a meal? Peel and core the apple however you prefer, then dice half and sprinkle over the chicken and salad in the bowl. Now, add a handful of craisins (dried cranberries) on top of that. Feel free to add slivered parmesan cheese to top off the whole thing.

Enjoy!

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You Always Have Options

Purchase is made online and charged to a credit card.

Shipment is lost (or never sent).

Vendor takes no responsibility and blames shipper.

Shipper is their only option for purchasing goods.

Shipper support services are not available.

No goods, no replacement offer… no refund policy.

Report goods not received to credit card provider.

Credit card provider will investigate and refund for services not received.

True story. Sad story. Twice this month.

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Simple Chili

Here’s another recipe for cold winter days: a simple slow-cooker chili that requires 15-20 minutes of preparation and 5-6 hours to cook in a slow cooker set to high temperature.

Here are the ingredients:
– (1) can of tomato juice (large)
– (1) can of diced tomatoes (whole tomatoes cut down works too)
– (1) can of red kidney beans (drained)
– (1) pound of ground turkey (or beef)
– (1) medium to large onion rings(my preference is Spanish or sweet)
– chili powder (add to taste – 4-1/2 to 6 tablespoons is a good range)

Now that we have the ingredients gathered together, let start with the preparation.

Start with the onion. Split it in half; finely dice one half of the onion and start sautéeing the diced onion in a pan large enough also to hold the ground meat. For the other half of the onion, chop into large pieces.

While the diced onion is sautéeing, add the tomato juice, diced tomatoes, drained kidney beans, and chopped onion to the slow cooker. Sprinkle each ingredient with one tablespoon of chili powder (spread evenly).

Once the diced onion is sautéed, add 1/2 to one tablespoon of chili powder and mix well in the pan. Next, add your ground meat of choice. Start browning the onion and meat mixture.

Once the meat is browned, add one tablespoon of chili powder and mix well. Cook a few more minutes to ensure the ground meat and onion mixture is well blended.

Add the pan ingredients to the slow cooker, add another tablespoon of chili powder for a spicier flavor, cover the slow cooker, and set the timer for six hours.

While you wait, enjoy the day and think about the peanut butter sandwiches you will dip into your bowl of chili. Yes, peanut butter sandwiches—don’t knock them until you try them.

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Loyalty Is Its Own Reward

Reflecting on my experiences with people of various levels of loyalty, I find it intriguing how those who profess their utmost loyalty or feel the need to emphasize it often fall short in both words and actions.

Loyalty is its own reward. You don’t need to declare your loyalty; you either are or you aren’t. In most cases, your actions will speak volumes about who you are.

Loyalty can come at a cost. Your personal morals will shape the strength of the oath of loyalty you choose to take. Whether this is an internal commitment or openly expressed, it’s something to contemplate seriously before vocalizing it.

Keep in mind that while being loyal is admirable, if you expect others to be loyal to you simply because they claim to be, you might want to take that commitment with a grain of salt—or in some cases, an entire salt mine.

Loyalty is its own reward. The true reward lies not with those to whom you’ve declared your loyalty, but in how you can see yourself in the mirror and maintain eye contact with the person to whom you pledged loyalty when your commitment is put to the test.

Take what you will from this, and remember that not only is loyalty its own reward, but so is the karma tied to that reward.

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We All Carry Our Own Bag Of Hammers

We all have our own bag of hammers.

I’ve often attributed the above quote to Michael J. Fox, as I recall him first saying it when he openly discussed his Parkinson’s disease.

My version of the quote is more like, “We all carry our own bag of hammers.”

In essence, I’m referring to the idea that each person has challenges to deal with. I gain perspective when I relate my challenges or listen to someone else relay theirs. Almost everyone sees their challenge as the most important, and recognizing that it is to them also provides the opportunity to move forward and hopefully past your own.

Recognizing these opportunities to grow and advance while helping others overcome their challenges makes carrying these bags of hammers that much easier. By recognizing that another is already holding their bag of hammers, you may also see how to lighten your load and allow another to bear their burdens more easily.

Today, I listened to friends tell me about the challenges they have faced and are facing. Almost immediately, I saw that my bag of hammers has nowhere near the number of sharp edges and hard points that they have dealt with. This does not mean that the challenges I will face are not fraught with some very sharp points and significant hard spots, but they are not quite as sharp or as hard.

The challenges we are dealing with are similar but also much different. I can only hope that a sympathetic ear knocked off a few sharper points they banged up against.

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Master Content Management: Tips for Documentarians

The analog world is often very different from the digital world. We live in both, meaning planning a method of organizing “assets” will most likely be different for your digital life, especially how you manage your life outside of the one and zeroes you are looking at on your screen.

As a documentarian, managing content is a multifaceted task. Whether you manage your content from the micro or macro perspective, you can often apply the same approaches.

Consider content as blocks you are building with. Whether that block is a paragraph, a page, or a collection of pages, moving these blocks about should be done with the same ideals of knowing the structure you are using and following the same approach each time you move one of these blocks. Consistency allows you to understand where you can expect to find the information you seek, regardless of history.

Building these pieces of information into appropriate sizes and types of blocks also allows you to ensure that if you need to move a block, it retains all of its supporting information. This retained information can be in the form of sub-blocks or, perhaps, a collection of dynamic links to the supporting information. It mostly depends on the structure being used for the information.

Documentation that combines text and images should either include the images directly in the document or use a dynamic link to a stable repository of images. This repository can also exist as a sub-folder or block within a block of the document.

Moving to a collection of documents should retain this block and sub-block approach for each document. This will allow for the movement of the entire collection or the movement of a selection of documents within the collection, either within or without the overall collection.

This is much like the more straightforward principles of object-oriented programming (OOP), where you often use the same functional approach to various project parts and have individual functions manage smaller pieces of the overall application.

In short, decide your organizational structure, consider future requirements, and iterate on your approach. Organizing anything should always have a dynamic quality.

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Pork And Rice – Winter 2024

One of many comfort foods we like to eat that is also relatively simple, easy, and quick to make. In short, Pork & Rice; in a bit more detailed of a title Pork Tenderloin with Spanish Rice. The following is my Winter 2024 iteration of the recipe followed by some thoughts for future iterations.

To start, the ingredients are rather straightforward. You will need, at a minimum, a Pork Tenderloin, a package of ready to make Spanish Rice (I typically use Uncle Ben’s), sliced mushrooms (fresh are nice, but canned work well and what I generally use), some salsa (as spicy or as mild as you prefer or that fits your diet), and some chicken broth.

First up, start the Spanish Rice. This does require the rice be cooked in a pot big enough to add the tenderloin to at the end. Adjust the recipe to use chicken broth and salsa in place of the water the package calls for. In this case, a full package of rice calls for 3-1/2 cups of water. Switch this to 3 cups of chicken broth and 1 cup of salsa. Set your timer to the low side of the recommended cooking times.

Next, trim down the pork tenderloin as needed. Our diet requires an extremely lean version of any meat. This may take a few minutes. You might consider doing this before starting the rice as needed. Once the tenderloin has been further trimmed, cube it to reasonable bite size pieces and put in a pan to brown and cook to a medium level.

As the meat approaches the medium level, add the sliced mushrooms. These can be prepped while the meat is cooking or you can open the can and drain the majority of any liquid the mushrooms are packed in.

Continue cooking the pork with the mushrooms until most of the liquid has been cooked off and with a bit of luck this will time out to the rice timer you set earlier.

Turn off all the stove burners.

Add the pan of pork and mushrooms into the rice pot. Mix well, and leave to cook on the cooling range burner for approximately 5 minutes.

Stir and serve with a tablespoon, or two, of sour cream on top. Enjoy!

Future considerations:
– adjust the rice recipe to 2 cups or water and 2 cups of salsa.
– and/or add a cup of salsa to the pork pan when you add the meat.

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Sometimes

Sometimes, the best way to get ideas flowing is to just write without any specific direction. Let your thoughts and imagination take you wherever they want to go, whether it’s on a computer screen or a piece of paper.

How do you get started? That’s a great question.

Sometimes things go in cycles. You start, then stop, and then start again. But the key is to make sure you start one more time than you stopped.

Sometimes, you’ll hit a creative spark that takes you on a thrilling journey of imagination, filling your mind with both literal and literary ideas. But other times, you’ll have to brave the dreaded writer’s block that stands in the way of your next masterpiece.

Remember that writer’s block is not just a novelist or story tellers concern. Take it from one who often feels like they are masquerading as a documentarian when they inevitably hit what must surely be a tangible brick and mortar stalling wall.

Sometimes.

Sometimes you have to find a way through.

Sometimes you have to find your way around.

Sometimes you have to find your way over or under or in-between, but you must find yourself on the other side.

However, a firm belief in either the miraculous or the mundane will always find something or someone that will meet you on the other side and remind you of those times you have found your sometimes.

Write often. Write well. Right yourself.

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Herding Cats And Thoughts

Sometimes, there comes a point when you need to step back and collect your thoughts and intentions, which can be a bit challenging when many things are going on in your life.

Consider using what has been referred to as “second brains.” I tend to gravitate towards digital variety, but I still love the feeling of writing my thoughts down on paper. It was a happy coincidence that I found a digital version of my favorite analog approach to note-taking.

Herding my thinking felines is more straightforward and more handy to have the option to pop open a digital device and jot them down versus finding my journal, opening it up, and, hopefully, being ready to add another written note. However, opening a digitized version of a journal or note-taking application makes all the difference when you know that you can easily cut and paste your note from one place to another where it makes more sense. It’s especially great when the digital version of your second brain uses virtually the same system as your preferred analog version of taking notes.

Collecting your thoughts digitally also allows you to search them within your note-taking application of choice; in some cases, you can search the raw files to find the nugget of information you thought might be important and is now actually relevant.

You might even find yourself purring with contentment as you sift through your second brain for those great ideas you didn’t want to forget… or forgot that you forgot it.

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Staying The Course

Following the same path multiple times between two points might be boring and mundane. Still, consistency can bring a certain amount of comfort. Repetition is close to consistency, and repetition and consistency can often lead to great things. Practice makes perfect, or so the old saying goes.

The path between two points may not always be the most efficient or even practical, but that should also be measured against the results and what is wanted when you are trying to get from A to B. Just traversing the distance is one matter, but if you are retracing your steps and looking for ways to improve then that consistent behavior also gives you a benchmark to measure potential improvements.

When trying to maintain a consistent approach leading to perpetual improvement, continuous review of that path is necessary to ensure that improvement opportunities are taken advantage of. As muscle memory provides for consistent behavior, it does no harm to look for and find better exercises to work through.

Consistent interface elements, due to their familiarity, enhance user experience. Users can learn the meaning of an element in one area and expect the same behavior when they encounter a similar element elsewhere. This consistency breeds comfort.

Consistency begets simplicity by its uniform nature. Complex systems built with consistent design can have their steep learning curve smoothed out with consistent design and behavior. Stay the course, and be consistent.