alphapenguin - Haughtypenguin Blog

April 28, 2012April 28, 2012

DIY Rotisserie Chicken/Cornish Hen

My personal Recipe for Rotisserie Chicken. I personally use Cornish Hen because they are smaller/easier to handle. I also dont want tons of leftovers.

Things you need:

2 Cornish Hens
Butter (doesnt matter what kind really) and a ceramic/porcelain bowl
Rosemary
Garlic or Garlic Salt
Rotisserie
Basting Brush
some sort of string that you can tie the legs and wings together (otherwise they flop all over)

I love my grill, and if you want a top of the line grill without going overboard, get an American Outdoor Grill (AOG). They are made by the same company who makes FIRE MAGIC, which is in the high end grill range. I will dedicate a review specifically when I get to it.

First you want to fire up the grill to heat it up. One thing I noticed is when grilling in the dead of winter with snow, things take FOREVER to cook. Didnt think it would matter since I would have the grill cover down, but… yep it matters. Eitherway, it is nice if you have a back burner for the rotisserie, but if you dont have one and just have a regular burner, that should be fine, as long as you get the temperature up to around 350-400 degF.

You will need to make the basting/marinade. I just use about half a stick of butter, place it in the bowl, place the rosemary and garlic salt in. Set the bowl in the grill as well (off to the side not on a direct flame). This melts the butter nicely.

Now wash up the hens nicely/thaw them out. Stick them on the rotisserie spit and tie the legs and wings together so they do not flop around as discussed earlier. Once the grill is up to heat, mount the spit on the rotisserie motor and let it roll. Take the butter/rosemary/garlic salt mix and start basting the hen every 5-10 min. This thing will smell amazing, and be so tender when it is done.

So how long should you cook this for? Well in the dead of winter, I’ve noted cooking times as long as 1-2 hrs. Not sure if it really should take that long, but it was definitely cooked and was not dried out at all. During the spring/summer it seems 40 min is sufficient. I obviously would always make sure the meat is cooked through before eating.

Once all and done, eat up and share with friends:)

April 28, 2012March 6, 2013

DIY Gyro Meat with Tzatziki Sauce Recipe

Recipe from http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/gyro-meat-with-tzatziki-s…
Cook Time: 1 hr 15 min
Level: Intermediate
Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

* 1 medium onion, finely chopped or shredded
* 2 pounds ground lamb
* 1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
* 1 tablespoon dried marjoram
* 1 tablespoon dried ground rosemary
* 2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* Tzatziki Sauce, recipe follows

Directions

Process the onion in a food processor for 10 to 15 seconds and turn out into the center of a tea towel. Gather up the ends of the towel and squeeze until almost all of the juice is removed. Discard juice.

Return the onion to the food processor and add the lamb, garlic, marjoram, rosemary, salt, and pepper and process until it is a fine paste, approximately 1 minute. Stop the processor as needed to scrape down sides of bowl.

To cook in the oven as a meatloaf, proceed as follows:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Place the mixture into a loaf pan, making sure to press into the sides of the pan. Place the loaf pan into a water bath and bake for 60 to 75 minutes or until the mixture reaches 165 to 170 degrees F. Remove from the oven and drain off any fat. Place the loaf pan on a cooling rack and place a brick wrapped in aluminum foil directly on the surface of the meat and allow to sit for 15 to 20 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 175 degrees F. Slice and serve on pita bread with tzatziki sauce, chopped onion, tomatoes and feta cheese.

To cook on a rotisserie, proceed as follows:

Form the meat mixture into a loaf shape and place on top of 2 overlapping pieces of plastic wrap that are at least 18 inches long. Roll the mixture in the plastic wrap tightly, making sure to remove any air pockets. Once the meat is completely rolled in the wrap, twist the ends of the plastic wrap until the surface of the wrap is tight. Store in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or up to overnight, to allow the mixture to firm up.

Preheat the grill to high.

Place the meat onto the rotisserie skewer. Place a double-thick piece of aluminum foil folded into a tray directly under the meat to catch any drippings. Cook on high for 15 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium and continue to cook for another 20 to 30 minutes or until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 165 degrees F. Turn off the heat and allow to continue to spin for another 10 to 15 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 175 degrees. Slice and serve on pita bread with tzatziki sauce, chopped onion, tomatoes, and feta cheese.

Tzatziki Sauce:

16 ounces plain yogurt

1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped

Pinch kosher salt

4 cloves garlic, finely minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

5 to 6 mint leaves, finely minced

Place the yogurt in a tea towel, gather up the edges, suspend over a bowl, and drain for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Place the chopped cucumber in a tea towel and squeeze to remove the liquid; discard liquid. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the drained yogurt, cucumber, salt, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, and mint. Serve as a sauce for gyros. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to a week.

Yield: 1 1/2 cups

April 28, 2012April 28, 2012

Steamed Salmon with Spring Onions and Tsai’s Special Sauce

: Fresh Salmon

This recipe was inspired from:

First you take some fresh salmon, clean it up real good like a gangsta.
Throw some salt on it
Cut up some spring/green onions length wise and sprinkle it along the salmon
Let the salmon sit in the fridge for about 20 min (you dont want it to get all nasty on you)

: Ready to Steam

Then you want to steam the fish, but there are multiple ways to do this. You do not need a power burner, or an outdoor kitchen to do this, but it’s just so much more fun. The fish will take about 20-30 minutes to steam. While that is gett’n goin, you will want to prep the special sauce. Now I can not really take any credit for this at all, but I did take some liberty in how this is made.

The Sauce:

take some fresh garlic, about 3-4 cloves, dice them up and throw them in a small pot to boil
cut some ginger in discs, sqaures, strips, doesnt matter. I always am at a shortage of giner, so I just use ginger powder (good enough). How much? meh… trow in a tsp or so.
throw in some brown sugar, about 3-5 tbl spoons
add 3/4 cup to 1 cup light soy sauce
add 3/4-1 cup of cooking wine (sometimes I use Soju or Sake)
get about 2-3 tsp of seasamie oil and heat it over an open flame to get it nice and toasty, then add it into the sauce concoction.
continue to hear the mix until it boils a bit, then you are good to go. you can play around with amount of ingredients.

Now the fish and sauce shold be ready. You want to be careful with the fish, as there will be a lot of water sloshing around. Try to drain some if possible. However you do it, just be careful because it is HOT.

Pour the sauce over the fish and serve. Goes great with some stir fried spinach and rice. yummmmmmmmm.

April 28, 2012

Follow up to the Blessing in Disguise

Well here I am. May is coming and still pending any finalization with a future employment. No worries though, because I am not worried. I was able to come across a variety of great opportunities. Not only are they are stable and offer a much more pleasant atmosphere it would seem. I have been able to narrow it down to two different places, and I am awaiting some final details before I can make an definite choice and sign that elusive contract. Back to the point though with the blessing in disguise. I was much more vague in the initial post, but care less currently about being vague. Suffice it to say, when people say “maybe it’s a blessing in disguise” there are many ways to interpret the events that unfold, but I have to say PHEW. Despite having a rug tugged from under my feet, I fortunately landed in a field of mangoes. (I love mangoes, so I figure landing in a field of mangoes would be a good thing). More to come later I suppose when things are final, but I must say. Things are on the up and up.

March 2, 2012March 2, 2012

“Maybe it is a blessing in disguise…”

Well when life throws your a curve ball, and the ball smacks you right in the face, breaking your nose or causing a orbital blow out fracture, it’s a little hard to see it as “a blessing in disguise.” Then again you really can not appreciate the situation until your nose stops bleeding, and you regain your eye sight. No worries, I did not get smacked in the head by a ball, but it feels more like a kick in the nuts. Eitherway, such things heal, and life goes on.

I will not go into specifics, but the adage “do not put all your eggs in one basket” does appear to hold true. In life make sure you have a back up plan of some sorts. I am not saying never invest all your heart into something. I’m saying you have to keep your mind open for opportunities. When you develop tunnel vision on only one outcome, you will freak out when you have to take a detour.

It appears I am just rambling on aimlessly now. I started out wanting to interject the pent up frustration I have had over the past month, but I do realize that in a public forum, I have to be cognoscente of what I display online. On that note maybe I will just end this thought here and now. I will update this fully once I figure out if my blessing in disguise truly is a blessing or just truly a kick in the nuts.

NamMyoHyoRenKeKyo

February 12, 2012March 5, 2012

Biscuits+Honey Bears – Babies = :)

In a followup to my Biscuit and Honey post. I figured I would just buy frozen biscuits and a honey bear from Kroger. Can NOT beat fresh Biscuits and Honey. Just need to keep the honey away from the baby. PSA: no honey for babies, or you get a floppy baby… then a dead baby. That is no good.

but the sweet delectable honey on biscuits is!

February 7, 2012February 7, 2012

SPAM comments

Seriously, what the heck is with all the spam comments. None are getting posted because my spam filter on WordPress is catching them all, but holy crap. I’ve deleted over 70 spam posts today. If I really had so many hits, I’d be flattered that people are coming to my site, but… not so much.

Please stop spamming. I will not approve your useless comments about Viagra or Tiberland or Acer, nor will I promote your useless blogpages that are selling medications or whatever.

Maybe this is falling on deaf ears since most spam is probably created by spambots. Only if this spam was the type people could eat, then the world would never go hungry… EVAR!

P.S. your comments will never be displayed spammers, so why bother?

February 2, 2012February 2, 2012

“I want adipex, and I refuse to exercise” – how about Develop a weight loss plan with the Kinect

I am sure people already have some fangled setup using the kinect to lose weight, but I wonder if we can actually entice patients to lose weight more effectively using video games. They are more fun, and would more likely keep attentions spans longer.

Games like Dance Central and Just Dance are very exhausting, yet still fun. Other cool thing is your progress is tracked, and I think you should be able to share the progress online via the XBox Live. I am pondering if we can do a study that would have people play the kinect consistently every day for about 30 minutes a day, and eat a healthy diet. Maybe there would be more compliance and success with weightloss. You might think, “duh, if you exercise and eat right you will lose weight.” That is a no brainer, but the hardest part about doing that is… doing it. I’ve tried many times to finish P90X, but it just gets kinda of boring. It’s a great workout and I have no doubt if I stuck with it every day, I’d have

Abs like Thanh Nguyen. Also if I had no obligation every day, I would definitely not mind spending 90minutes a day with Tony Horton and him telling me to “x” him.

Then again, playing the Xbox might not be enough motivation to keep on an exercise program. That too can still get boring. I guess it’s all about motivation. There was a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA] titled “Financial Incentive–Based Approaches for Weight Loss”

They were trying to see if people would have more compliance/success with weight loss if there was a monetary incentive/benefit. Their conclusion:

The use of economic incentives produced significant weight loss during the 16 weeks of intervention that was not fully sustained. The longer-term use of incentives should be evaluated.

Employees of Ohiohealth who have the employee health insurance are able to enroll in this “Health Miles Program”. You get this pedometer and you can get money back if you log a certain amount of steps/activity every day throughout the year. You can get up to 500$. There is no cost for you to enroll either. Now you would think this is a great incentive to stay active, but I never made it to the $500. Some days I was too busy to wear it, and there were many days that I was still just too lazy to stay active. Another drawback is people cheat, I have see many people [at least when it first started] that sit there on the hospital floor and just shake the pedometer in their hand…. yah. anyway.

Maybe my friend, we’ll call him Qi, has the right idea, and compete with your friends in “the biggest loser” contests, where you win something for losing the most weight. Then again, the goal should be to be healthy and lose weight, not get fat as you can and then crash diet to win the contest.

Then again we have the people who see me for the first time and want to talk about weight loss. They tell me “I don’t eat anything” and “never lose weight”, and ask me to prescribe Adipex (weight loss pill, stimulant, more or less not good for you). I usually ask them to keep a food diary/activity log so they can visualize how much they “are not eating” or rather ARE eating. Of course, I would say 99% of the people don’t follow through, or don’t come back. Endocrine disorders aside, it’s really simple math. Calories in minus calories out. If you get a positive number, you are taking in too much or not using enough. If you get a negative number, then you really should be on your way to shedding weight, (or you are logging your cals wrong).

I am not a big fan of diet pills because of the dangerous side effects. I wouldn’t want my patient’s heart to explode because they were too rev’d up from the diet pills. I mean there is a place (I suppose) for the use of these medications, but if you are not going to make an effort at watching what you eat and try to exercise… a diet pill is not going to do it for you. It’s the same for the bariatric surgeries, some people expect the surgery to do all the work. They don’t change their life style, and they end up gaining their weight back.

Well, I think I got a little side track with this post. Maybe I will see if MommyMD will give me some stimulants so I can lose weight too, and forget about this P90X and Tony Horton can just X himself. (I jest).

January 29, 2012January 29, 2012

Hiring: Insect management. You: Green, small and amphibious. apply via comment

With my ventures in cultivating tropical plants and building a koi pond indoors, I’ve noticed that I also somehow generate hundreds of gnats. I assume it may be from over-watering, decaying vegetation. Maybe if I keep the area cleaner, this wouldnt be an issue. Now they are running amuck on the 1st floor as well as the second floor. In the past I thought it would be a genius idea to start keeping carnivorous plants as well (mainly sundews). Logic dicates that the gnats would be controlled with these predatory photosynthesizers. It actually worked fairly well, but I was too cheap to keep them in a proper container. They actually grew too well and caught a lot of gnats. Then the gnat level died down and I am not sure what happened, but I could not keep my precious bug eaters alive. I think part of the problem was my basement was 1. too cold, 2. too dry.

With the winter upon us, I deal with the insect annoyance I have today. I have my Prized Mango and Coffee plant on the 1st floor, and noticed that gnats have been haunting the soil. This is putting MommyMD on edge, so I finally set up this portable bug zapper she had purchased. It actually seems to be working, because every so often you will hear a zap. This (for whatever reason) scares the crap out of Combo (the Pomeranian). The gnats dont seem to be terribly attracted to the light, so I’d say it somewhat works. What has worked in the past (aside from the Sundews) was using insect sticky tape, so we went to HomeDepot and got some. In the basement I am getting ready to plug in another bug zapper as well. I’d rather use a Sundew, but if I order one online, I am afraid the cold weather will kill it in-transit.

So this brings me to another idea, the motivation of this post. What about putting a frog in the pond? Obviously a thought is that the frog will jump out and disappear. I say this is a non issue. 1. The frog will want to stay by the water. If it leave, it will come back sooner or later (I mean he’s stuck in my basement). 2. Kermit will want to go to where the food is, and the gnats are around the pond. I mean how could this be a bad idea?

froggie could hop away and never be found again (and die and rot somewhere)
froggie could slather it’s salmonella body all over the basement, and ViviBear could contract salmonella and develop meningitis/sepsis
froggie could make its way upstairs and do as above.
someone could step on froggie
froggie will multiple and then I will have a frog infestation
the frog will defecate over my basement (what does frog poo look like?

I suppose those are valid concerns, but maybe the frog will just stay in the pond? Are the above really rational/reasonable concerns?

What do you guys think? I guess I am talking to myself here. I don’t think I really have that many people that venture to this blog. Amazingly when I consulted MommyMD she did not object to the idea. Maybe that is the sign for a go.

Here is the potential future habitat for my green friend

For more about my Pond project you can see it here

-to be continued-

January 28, 2012January 29, 2012

Penguins Don’t Fly, HaughtyPenguin Don’t Swim: overcoming your fears

SimpBumblebeeMan_f — bumblebee man (Simpsons)

There are defintetly a couple of things that I fear. One is Bees, and the other is drowning. O, I guess another would be wrestling practice [for another time]. I just dont like bees because they can/will sting you just for the hell of it and it will hurt like a mofo. I dont think I actually have been stung before, but to the point, it’s annoyig how they follow you around and wont leave if you shoo them. It may actually piss them off and they will sting you. It’s like, who the hell are you to get up on me and invade my personal space. I really hate it when they hover around because you have food (mainly seems when I have a hotdog with ketchup). It’s sort of like when a person comes off the street and asks you for a dollar, and gets up in your face at night. You are not sure what to do at first, and may even fear they will whack you.

This post is not about my fear(hatred) of bees, alas. This is about the dreaded abyss. The home of neptune. The aqueous hell that stand in the way of graduating from highschool (I’ll get more into this later). If you havent figured it out yet, I’m talking about swimming.

I wouldn’t say I am afraid of water, probably more likely afraid of the prospect of drowning. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been afraid of water that was higher than my head. This would be problematic at water parks, lakes, oceans etc. I spent a lot of my time at the kiddy pool. Maybe if they had a 3-4ft depth section, I would be able to venture into the waters (when I was at least 1 ft length above the water with feet on ground. So one would ask “cant you swim?”
Well no I cant. Actually that is not accurate either, I am just not good at swimming. Well if it was prior to highschool, I guess I’d have to say yah, I did not know how to swim you a-hole. From what I can recall, my mom first enrolled me in swim lessons when I was around 5 or 6 at the Josephinum Pontifical College in Worthington (Ohio). I refused to go into the pool (wasting my mom’s money for the class). My brother initially afraid as well. She tried to bribe us with these pens that were personalized with out names on it. My brother was easily coerced and was soon jumping off the diving bored. The ingrate that I was, I took the pen and stayed on dryland with mommy.

Second try was in Taiwan, where my mom enrolled us yet again in swim classes. The thing I didnt like about pools in Taiwan was that we had to wear these swim caps. I felt they made me look stupid (not like the wake up and go bedhead/asian kid look wasnt stupid). I did go in the pool, but I never did learn how to swim well. I just remember practicing kicking while holding onto the wall. Most of the time I was too afraid of ingesting the chlorinated water.
I then remember all the times we went to Wyndotte Lake, a water park in Columbus now known as Zoombezie Bay (sp). I hated the wave pool, and spent all of my time at the shallow end.

One summer in Cali, my aunt took my brother and I to a water park. There was this thing where you would climb across the water holding on to a rope and step on the floating foam platforms. Well my upper body strength was never great and of course I fell in. Unfortunately the water was probably 6 ft, and I was likely 4’6″ at the time. I remember almost drowning and splashing around. The life gaurd was a little pissed off at me. Asshole didnt jump in but luckily some pushed me to the edge and I climbed out. I was told not to go in anymore if I can not swim. Makes sense, but that was embarrassing.

Another time in Hawaii (my dad used to go to a lot of conferences and took us with him) we were at this awesome resort. I went on this waterslide, but I did not know how deep the water at the other end was. Well again it was over my head and I remember frantically splashing around to stay afloat. I dont really remember how I got out of that one.
Now both these times I was trying to get over my fear of water (and I didnt realize how deep the water was).
Now these near drowning experiences always left a bad chlorine taste in my mouth so to speak.

I figured if I stayed land locked, I would never really have to worry about the water issue, but for whatever freak’n reason my high school had a mandatory swim test. You had to pass in order to graduate. For those who know me, I do get anxious about many things, neurotic to a point. With this looming over my head freshman year was not fun. When it came time, we all had to jump in, swim a length of the pool down, swim a length back and then tread water for 5 minutes. Well I was one of the first ones in. I tried my hardest to swim down the length. Slowly my classmates passed me by, then passed me again on their way back. My buddy Dennis had knee surgery not long ago, and was one of the last ones in. He also passed me and again on his way back. I actually splashed and flailed my way to one end and back to the other. The problem was the treading water. I was definitely panicking (I was doing this the whole time mind you), and I started to go under a couple of times. You’ve probably seen it on TV where the poor sap starts to dip under the water, head will bob out, hands flail, water splashes, then head goes under again. I started to drag some people down, but Eddie Haas was nice enough to push me to the edge of the pool. Suffice it to say I failed the swim test that day. I had to then take a remedial swimming course during gym time. That was probably a good thing since I was able to learn how to properly tread water and not freak out while in the pool. If anything I learned to drown calmly.

Now this brings me to the original inspiration for this post. I wonder if Vivienne is going to have an issue with water, and how should I go about making sure she learns to swim. I heard that with babies, you should be able to throw them in a pool, and they naturally know to hold their breath underwater. Something to do with the fact that they were swimming for about 9 months (less I supposed if you don’t count the embryo stages) prior to being pushed out into this dry/eczematous world.

They offer classes at my highschool, as well as the local gym. Maybe I should just ask a friend who swims. I guess MommyMD knows how to swim anyway – by the way, she is a horrible swim teacher. When she goes swimming with me she just comments “I don’t understand why you cant swim”. Not very productive if you ask me- She will likely have a different approach with the ViviBear.

Now I found this picture on the right via a google search. It seems they strap these babies (and I only saw asian babies with this) head only in, and let them float. It actually seems like some form of torture, but they don’t appear to be unhappy.
-edit- after reading stell’s comment, I decided to actually read the page that I jacked this photo from. no mention of CP for those asian heads, just “development”. –

Overall ViviBear seems fine with bath time:

I figure maybe I will take lessons with ViviBear. I think my problem with swimming really is the fact that I dont like the feeling of not breathing. I hate ingesting chlorine water, because it’s dirty. So far my records is doing 10 laps total. (not continuous).

If any of you have any suggestions, I am all ears. Feel free to post a comment or something as well. I just keep getting these spam comments selling viagra and some other diet pills.

O yah, after the remedial swim course I did pass the swim test (hence graduating). Still not a fan of swimming. or bees. or wrastl’n.

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