My wife and I have been married almost 20 years and we've become very comfortable in our respective roles in the relationship.....until now.  Somehow, it's my wife that can't miss one Cubs baseball game on the television and I find myself in the kitchen baking bread.  I can only blame one thing....Ebay. 

     Not only is it easy for her to get her favorite fan items day or night but I find that whims are easier to cater to with a quick trip to the computer.  She now has more Cub shirts than I do and that's ok...I'm still secure in my Cubfan identity.  The fact that I'm looking for a good stand mixer to make baking easier and more productive is got me scratching my head.  I get the same rush I used to get standing in front of the Craftsman Powertools. 

     I'm drawing the line at making quiche, though.......well, maybe I'll try it in a pinch, snicker.  All I know is that Ebay saves me a ton of cash and gas and I've never had more fun exploring new avenues.  Plus, it save me from having to question the sales clerk about the wattage and flour capacity of a kitchen appliance while the clerk watches me out of the corner of their eyes and hides a secret smirk. 

Peace and Love and Proofed Yeast Success....

Not a new one...one of the ones that has seen enough losing season that he doesn't even hear the jeers and insults.  I can't express how thrilled I am at our recent success but still harbor that inner fear that we'll fall flat at the downside of the season.

Now, that's not why I wrote this.  I have notice that there is a virtual blizzard of Fukudome shirts on the market right now.  Some of them are insulting to his heritage, some are just downright foul.  I don't get it.  If we had an idol, we didn't find ways to make fun of his name.  We whispered it in awed reverence or renamed ourselves in their honor at every scratch sandlot game.  My wife thinks it's all in fun but I can't help wondering what happened to the sanctity of the game.  Perhaps it's societies fault, or the players with their ridiculous salaries or even the owners, themselves.  Something has changed and I don't like it one bit.  Give me an Ernie Banks with his quick smile and self-deprivating charms.  I wish for the days you could hang over the dugout and get an autograph or mill around after the game and touch the coat-tails of players that seemed 10ft tall.  Baseball will always be baseball.  It's forever a part of our childhood and sadly, I hate to see it evolve into a pull-my-finger joke.  Sigh...but I'm old, what did you expect.  

Peace, Love and The Smack Of The Bat On A Hot Summer Afternoon.....and ivy, always ivy.....

The dirty deed is done.  20lbs of crawfish boiled to a spicy but delicious end.  Enough Hurricanes drank to blur even the sharpest memory and pictures galore.  We had a great time.  For a day, us Northerners felt more than a little Southern and enjoyed the hell out of it. 

It was hilarious watching friends and family trying to figure out how to eat these tasty crustateans but in the end, the table was piled high with the leavings of a satisfied crowd.  I want to say thanks to Louisiana for the stars of the show, they were a hit and thanks to everyone who showed up and dug in.

I still have a gallon of Hurricane mix left over so anyone who wants to stop over and help us cheer the recovery day is welcome.

Peace and Love and Boils for everyone,  Doug

Mudbugs....what to do, what to do?  Perhaps you're thinking poison or traps but I have a better idea.  A sadistic bath of boiling and spicy water will do the trick. 

Confused?  Let me clear it up...  For you who do not know, mudbugs are crawfish.  With my wife's birthday coming up I have 20lbs of the little critters waiting to take a bath with lemons, corn and potatos.  Hopefully everything turns out well because there's not a Cajun in the bunch of us.  For the one's that can't stomach the idea of eating the tail and sucking the heads, there'll be plenty of other food on the grill so nobody should go home hungry. 

Keep you fingers crossed and maybe I'll post a picture in my profile of the initiation into crawdad boil nirvana.....