Jack Handy Quote of the Week

"If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward."
-Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy

Around the World

Yesterday, while I was driving home from work, I realized how very hungry I was. I had only eaten a piece of Banana Bread for breakfast and a lean cuisine sandwich for lunch, delicious but not at all filling. While I was driving home I racked my brain for what I was going to eat for dinner. I was so hungry that I wanted to get takeout because I didn't think I could handle waiting to get home and then having to cook a meal. What type of take out to get was now the big question? Mexican- no, had that Monday. Ethiopian (my new addiction)- nope, ate that Tuesday. Italian- no, cooked up some lemon spaghetti on Wednesday. Thai/Malaysian- mmmhhh sounds good. Thai/Malaysian it is. I called in the order to Hot Spice near Ansley Mall so I could drop by and pick it up as I drove past. After placing the order, I was sitting in traffic and my mind wandered back to what I had eaten all week.

I had a delicious bowl of steaming hot mexican chicken soup at Caramba Cafe on Monday. Caramba Cafe is a tex-mex family run joint on Highland across from Alons. I only ever get their soup because it always clears my sinuses out and everything else is pretty fattening. I like Caramba alright, my good friends LOVE it, but they have the shittiest service of any restaurant ever. I have been there dozens of times because of said friends and have always had the same service problems there. On Tuesday, I went to Cottage Ethiopian Restaurant for dinner. Cottage Ethiopian is in an old Burger King spot and looks sketch on the outside. The inside however is fairly decent and the veg plate is very good, especially the shiro (spicy ground chickpeas). I am a new fan of Ethiopian thanks to my friends Matt and Tracey. They introduced me to it a couple of months ago and I now get cravings for it just like I do with Vietnamese food. Wednesday night I actually cooked at home and made a dish out of Giada De Laurentiiss' cookbook. The dish was awesome and I will be posting the recipe sometime soon so look forward to that.

Thinking about these dinners as well as the up-n-coming chicken rendang dish I was about to go pick up made me realize that I have had 3 different ethnic meals this past week and I was about to eat another. This made me come up with the idea that for the rest of the week I am going to continue in the spirit of eating around the world. Since I have already covered Mexican, Thai/Malaysian, Ethiopian, and Italian I now need to finish the week and weekend off with 3 more ethnic meals. I will be posting a blog and pictures on my upcoming meals. The only ones I don't have pictures of is Ethiopian and Mexican and I might have to revisit Ethiopian on Monday to get a good photo in. I already have a semi-plan formed for today and the rest of this weekends food. For lunch, my co-workers and I are going to So Kong Dong, a Korean restaurant on Buford Hwy. I am excited about this because I have never had Korean. For this weekend I am going to make one meal Mediterranean and the other one is a toss up between Indian or Peruvian. I will let you know on Monday as well as post pictures of my food travels. That being said, I think that you, my reader, should also try and make a day this weekend to go out and eat some unamerican food. Its always fun to try new things and I guarantee that you will like something on the menu.

Do you have swine flu?

Hot news: In case you have been under a rock for the past week, WHO (who you ask?: the World Heath Organization) has raised the worlds pandemic threat level from a 4 to a 6 (out of 6). This is all do to the H1N1 virus strain, also known as swine flu, infecting people in multiple regions throughout the world. Why do I all the sudden feel as though we are closing in on 28 days? There the pandemic level was 6; should I be worried about the possibility of zombies rising up and retaliating/trying to eat me? Anyhoo, If you want to find out if you have it or not please click the link below. May the force be with you.

http://doihaveswineflu.org/

Funny yet Odd Deaths

A list of interesting deaths can be found at List of the Day. Click on the name to be taken to this funny post. I am particularly disturbed by the one where a short woman fell behind a tall bookcase in her home and suffocated. Apparently the family members thought she had been abducted for the 11 days leading up to the discovery of her body. All I can say is thank goodness I'm tall. Check it out.
**IF you don't enjoy morbidity then don't follow the links. No pictures though, so no worries

Remi the Dog

My friend Charlie told me he was on my blog and didn't see any pictures of his dog Remi in the dog pics post below, so this post is for him and his dog. FYI Remi is not his child, but his property; don't go calling him a doggie dad. I don't think these pictures were as good as they could be, Remi wouldn't stand still, but I just got a great new lens so I will be back to take more photos of him.

Recipe: Vingared Pot Salad

MMMhhhh pot salad. Let me tell you some advice about cooking with pot or better yet eating items cooked with pot- its a more enjoyable experience when you know that Maryjane is one of the ingredients. Not to say that it isn't fun otherwise, but it's more shocking and worrisome when you had no idea that you just ingested some fun-time food. This comes from personal experience people. I would go into the whole story, but let's just say that I will be a bit more particular about what I eat when house sitting at a persons house. It's a bit overwhelming to be taken by surprise like that.

Anyhoo, this post isn't really a recipe for vinegared POT salad, it's a recipe for vinegared POTATO salad. I want to forewarn you that this recipe has no precise measurements, only precise ingredients, and even that can be changed to your liking. I am also going to be honest and tell you that I sometimes, really all the time, eat this salad warm because I am just to lazy to wait for the potatoes to cool down enough. Warm mayo doesn't scare me- I laugh in the face of salmonella or botulism or whatever the hell comes from eating warm mayo. Actually I don't even think warm mayo is all that bad unless it has been sitting out for hours under the hot Atlanta sun and then if I was really inebriated I would still eat it. No biggie.

So vinegared potato salad is of my own design or at least I thought it was until I googled it and found that I was sadly mistaken. It appears that most recipes either call for mayo and a teensy bit of vinegar, if any, or vinegar with no mayo served warm. Haha, I am the only one to come up with is. I knew I was a cooking genius. I guess I have to be good at something and since I haven't found shit else I excel at apparently coming up with this salad is my saving grace.

FYI: for those of you out there that are disappointed that this is a recipe for potato salad not pot salad then I would like to tell you that you could always add some to this if you want. Not sure how it would turn out, but then again I was never one to cook with illegal substances. I only eat souped up baked goods, I don't make them.

Vinegared Potato Salad
5 or 6 medium sized cooking potatoes such as Yukon Gold (you can actually use whatever kind of potato catches your fancy- if you like purple, go with purple, if you like the little red potatoes, go with them)
-Cut them potatoes into relatively equal bite sized pieces and throw them in a pot of cold salted water.
-Turn the burner on to high and cook the potatoes until they are fork-tender, but not mushy. Make sure you check often once the water boils. You don't want those bad boys to be too soft, otherwise you will have mashed vinegar potato salad, which I have made more than enough times.
- Once cooked, drain the potatoes and put in a big bowl and place in fridge. Let them cool down. You can add the other ingredients now if you impatient like I am.
Now to adding the additional ingredients:
-Start with 1/4 cup mayo, you want each piece of root to have a slight finish of mayo but no more ( you can always add more later)
-Start with a 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar (you can use cider vinegar or champagne vinegar too, if that is more your speed)
-Throw in some finely chopped red or white or green onion pieces
- Salt the bowl up
- Pepper the bowl up
-add more of any of the above, but go slow; you don't want to over vinegar, over salt, over may, or over pepper your salad

Voila! All done.
** You could also add some:
chopped up hard boiled egg
pickle juice
chopped up pickles
chopped celery
chopped up bacon (bleh)
chopped up herbs
capers
whatever else you want to become a cooking idiot savant like me

Good luck and good eats!

Hello Friends

Dear Reader,
I am going to take you through my life one step at a time. Let me know if you enjoy my lifeline: comment on the blog by using the comment button.
Love, Stephie

Stephie as an egg.

Check out those sweet dresses. I only hope my wedding will be so flowerific.

Stephie as an Embryo.

I was a damn hot embryo. Too bad y'all didn't get to see this.

Stephie as a baby.

The first of many times my bro' tried to take me out.

Stephie as a toddler.

I think I was going for a white trash look here. I pulled it off quite nice, I think.

Stephie as a 5 year old.

This is when people thought I was a caublanasian. Hard to believe I know.

Stephie as a 10 year old.

The Jew Fro in full effect. I actually had one larger; this is the light version.

Stephie as a teenager.
Jean shorts rocked. As do taking pictures with trees.



Stephie as high school graduate.

This is before I knew what straight irons were. However, I did know that fros for women were no longer in style, except if I was a burgeoning black panther.

Stephie as a college student.

Check out those blinged out tooths.

"Said she wanna be, One day she's gonna be, Said she's wanna be, Shorty's gonna be a Thug"

Stephie last week.

Actually, this was taken in 1975 and I had bad vision back then. I just got lasik.

Just kidding. about 1975 and having lasic. My vision is perfect or close to in one eye.

Inman Park Festival

Good times were had by all at the Inman Park Festival. I was surprised by how large the festival was. It has to be one of the top neighborhood festivals in Atlanta and I would suggest anyone near Atlanta hit it up next year. I saw lots of great new trends like utility fanny packs and grey tube socks with with crocs. Apparently tie die might be making a comeback or so the lesbians who were hawking their wares in front of Megan's house would like to think. I felt guilty leaving Bella behind when I had been gone the majority of the weekend so I brought her with and she was the belle of the ball. Bella is such an attention grabber, which is nice except the majority of attention she grabs is homosexuals and children. Not an issue but when is she gonna pull me a hot, straight man? I'm gonna be honest; she's not pulling her weight like I thought she would and I might need to cut her loose soon;) Patrick, Jason, Avenel, Richard, and some others were at Megan's ( she was kind enough to host a fabulous party) and they were fun to hang with. Jason brought his New York cuz', Brian, who was entertaining, but anyone related to Jason has to be fairly entertaining. I got a couple t-shirts from Esperanza- I love their stuff and the owners are pretty swell guys as well. All in all, fun times and beautiful weather: You can't beat that with a wooden spoon.

Funny online dating email

A friend of mine, *Susie, joined an online dating service called plenty of fish. The dating service is free and attracts all of the **upper-echelon men you expect to find on free dating service. She has since recieved numerous emails from men over the age of 50 (she's 30) and some emails from men who write in ebonics. The email below is a funny one she recieved lately. I am hoping she will provide many more humerous emails to come. Hint Hint.

Said Email:

"Dear Hot_X:

You're so hot, that's why they call this city Hotlanta.

Vinnie"

*Name has been changed until Susie says otherwise

**Susie has said that she has talked to some fairly well educated men on the dating service so my off handed and sarcastic comment blanketing all men on there is unjust and unfair.

Jack Handy Quote of the Week

"Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis."
-Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy