Not A New Years Resolutions

Not A New Years Resolutions

Well, first off, I don't do new years resolutions because the average person breaks them within a couple of days of making them. They're as smart as being a cop two days from retirement on a stake out... let's face it, that cop is about to die.



Most of all, they're not really resolutions. In that, they are attempts to resolve or correct a problem you feel you have, but they aren't the result of anything but wishful thinking. If anything they should change it from resolution to hopeful thinking. So I don't bother with them at all.

I generally think they're a lot like diets, it may work for the short term, but if you're not going to change the way you eat forever or your personal lifestyle, then you're really not going to get anything changed. Much like any real diet, it's more of a lifestyle change that effects the over all entirely of it. Last year I made a goal to write a blog post a day. 365 days later I finished a little over 500 blog post. See, that's a result. I think it's important for young people to set goals and then work towards them.


It's a good thing she wrote all that down or else she might forget whose dick she wants to suck.

This year, like any year, I'm just making goals for myself. While I may come short on one or two of them, I think that the overall outcome will be that a lot of them will actually be filled and I will change for this new year. I mean, it can't get anything but better, right? I started it with a destroyed car, a building that needs major reconstruction and a couple more pounds on me than I'm comfortable with.

So these are going to be my new year goals to change or to achieve. Because not everything is about changing every flaw about yourself, you do realize that is what makes you special.. what makes you, you.

-Do that whole Good Eats for a year thing I wrote about already
This automatically means I'll be cooking more

-Branch out my writing to various other sites and finally get more attention on it

-Go to Chicago
Deep Dish Pizza
Hawt Dog
Smoked Fish

- Go To New Orleans
Get Coffee there
Eat a lot of Oysters
Drink a Torando -Get completely drunk
Drive through Texas - Eat at The Salt Lick and buy shot glass from Buc-ee's

-Go to New York
Eat at an Appetizing/Deli for Lox
explore Old New York
eat at Papaya King
catch a show on Broadway

-Austria in December
see the Krampus Day celebration

-Get a new car.
It's a surprising fact that over 1,100 DUI arrest were made from Christmas Eve through the end of Sunday the 4th. In Los Angeles county alone there was 251 arrest, which makes up 23% of those state wide stats. Sadly, the person who plowed right into my car was not one of those who was caught BEFORE they had a chance of crashing. So this is why I need to get a new car.



So there you have it. That's my not-so-resolution-resolution for the upcoming year. It's a little funny though. I'm more set on doing things like planning trips and bettering myself at age 30 when I should have been doing this stuff at age 20. I guess the old lyric is true.. I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger. I have a lot more clear in my mind on my goals and my upcoming two years than I ever knew of anything in my past.

I may have started this year off really bad with a series of unfortunate events happening to me, but that by no means makes me think that the rest of the year, as well as the next one or two years I have mapped out in my mind are going to be anywhere near as bad.

I'm feeling very positive about the years ahead.

A Year Dried Up

A New Year - A Year of Good Eats

It's a few days into the new year and I think I've already got my new years resolution... well, not so much a resolution. I mean, what the hell does that mean anyway? People say they made a New Years resolution but in reality they just made an idea on how they could better improve themselves. Often times it's something entirely unattainable like losing weight or stop smoking. Chances are you'll be back on the buffet line or chain smoking within the month.

No, there's really nothing of a resolution in a new years resolution. I, on the other hand don't deal with those unattainable. Last year I had the idea that I would write in this blog at least once a day. It was a throw back to what I originally went towards in College after my dreams of being an artist met reality and I actually wanted to get paid. The more attainable goal, but yet equally struck down career path of being a journalist. So my goal in writing a blog a day was for me to easily write daily. Last look I had a little more than 500 blog post for the year.



I'm going to turn 30 this year. For some reason that scares me a little. Then again, I'm a guy and much like a fine wine, my aging will be graceful. So I shouldn't really have to worry. But it does mean that I'm done with my TWENTY-SOMETHINGS, and thus I should get a bit more things done... While I already know how to cook for myself and even worked for a short time in the kitchen while I went to college, I think the goal that I'm about to set for myself in the coming year is a bit difficult.

I want to make 2010 the year of Good Eats. I'm going to pull a Julia & Julie. For those of you who don't know, Julia & Julie was a film about some blogger chick who wanted to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of the French Cooking. She did it while blogging her way through it. Writing what she learned about cooking and herself. She later cheated on her husband. I'm not sure if Julia Child had that recipe in there. I never came across a recipe for that... I mean, I sat through the movie and I enjoyed the parts that highlighted Julia Child. But not even my crush on Amy Adams could really pull me to care about the Julie or her blog.



So in an attempt to openly mock it, while being completely serious in bettering myself, I off handed suggested that I devote a year of my cooking life discovering all that Good Eats has to offer. Yes, Good Eats as in Alton Brown's Food Network show. While Alton Brown is no Julia Child, in interviews Alton Brown has stated that the origins of Good Eats was to be one part Mr. Wizard, one part Monty Python and one part Julia Child. So in many ways this is the modern day version of that already out of date Julia & Julie project. Besides, I love all three of those sources, so this will not only be an educational project, it'll be one that I enjoy.

While I'm pretty sure I've seen 70% of the 13 seasons of episodes he has done, there's a lot of areas where I'm out of my element that I think I will learn a lot out of it. Baking, for example, is something I have never been any good with. So there will be a lot to pick up along the way and a lot to fine tune on the already established knowledge going into this. Just think of how much one can learn from 212 episodes. While I'm not going to be cooking every day, it's still enough subjects to stretch it to the 365 days in the year that I would have to both view the episode and cook up something from it. Considering today is the 4th and I already got two checked off the list, that's not bad at all.



Oh, what's that? I already have two off the list? Yes. It seems that so far I have made Steak au Poivre. Which was featured in Good Eats episode Tender is the Lion. Though, maybe I shouldn't count that one as it was a hybrid recipe that I consulted my travel guru who has no reservations and former chef of New York's Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain. I followed Good Eats for the most part but Bourdain had his recipe for it online and well, I just had to mix in a few of those. Perhaps next year I'll make it a goal to spend a year traveling around like Bourdain does.

And the second one, I actually have pictures of. Seems I was a bit too busy in making sure everything was going smoothly with the au Poivre to take any photographic proof that it existed. Though I suppose the only proof that needs be is the tastiness of it in one's stomach. Even better it was Dry aged meat. Nothing taste better than a slab of meat that has had a good 30 days to sit around and get that fat to marbleize throughout the steak. Delicious stuff.


Stock photo of what it looked like.

A little fun fact about Tuna is that you should always buy Tuna in those flavor sealed pouches. It's very simple, in the canning process tuna can often taste over cooked. There's a reason for that. You need to boil cans after the canning process... which cooks the tuna yet again. Because the pouches are flatter, it doesn't take as long to preserve the contents from bacteria and you're getting a lot less over cooked tuna.

You should also get them with the water around it. No need for the sunflower oil or anything else fancier. Just remember to get your tuna from pouches and you're good to go. So the real question is what you can make with your canned... er.. pouched meats? So the outside the box Tuna recipe I tried was to make some Tuna Croquettes. How did I do it? I'm glad you asked!

TUNA CROQUETTE

Ingredients

• 1 (7-ounce) pouch albacore tuna, drained well and shredded by hand
• 2 green onions, chopped fine
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup panko bread crumbs, divided
• Olive oil, for sauteing

Directions

Place the tuna, onions, mustard, eggs, lemon juice, salt, pepper and 1/4 cup of the bread crumbs into a medium mixing bowl and stir to combine.

Divide the mixture into 8 rounds and set aside on a parchment lined half sheet pan. Allow to rest for 15 minutes. It's very important to let them sit for that amount of time so that the moisture could soak up in those panko bread crumbs.

From there you put more Panko bread crumbs into a plate and you dump the tuna balls into there and pat them down so that they can get breaded.

Then heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a 12-inch saute pan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the croquettes and cook 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack set over a half sheet pan lined with paper towels. Allow to cool for 2 to 3 minutes before serving.

Let them sit for a while on a paper towel and then serve them up with some tartar sauce or various other sauces. It really wont matter because these were god damn delicious.



So I suppose this counts as the first.. or maybe the second.. shit, in the process of writing this blog post I already made scrambled eggs.. not just any scrambled eggs, the most fluffiest scrambled eggs I have ever eaten. So there you go, this is all about learning just a little more about myself and fine tuning all those culinary raw skills that I have in me making this year all about mastering the art of Good Eats.



So if you're keeping count, I've gone through three episodes of cooking;
Tender is the loin I, The Egg-Files, Pantry Raid VII: Tuna, Surprise!