Smoked Chicken Salad with Tomatillo Guacamole Dressing

On Wednesdays I go with my girlfriend, Ellen, to the stables where she teaches horseback riding to kids. Since I am nothing but a child myself, I get a free lesson every week so Ellen doesn't have to deal with the embarrassment of being a level 2 dressage athlete that is living with someone who can't tell a saddle from stirrup. As a thank you for the free horse rides, I try to bring by a little dinner for everyone. Today, since it was so warm out, I brought a chicken salad made with the meat from some chicken thighs I had smoked over hickory the day before. If you don't have the means to smoke your own chicken, you can easily buy the stuff from a local grocer. As is always the case with the recipes on this blog, I made this up on the spot. It was a big hit at the barn and to boot it is really healthy and very simple. I hope you like it.

Recipe
2 pounds smoked chicken, white or dark meat, diced
1 ripe California avocado (not the big, smooth Florida kind)
1 medium onion, small diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3/4 pound tomatillos, leaves removed and rinsed
juice of one lime
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure
Coat the Tomatillos in olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper. Roast in a 400 degree oven until soft. They will actually break open when they are done.
Pull from the oven and allow to cool. Once cooled, puree in a food processor or blender.
Peel and dice the avocado and place in a large bowl. Mash with a fork or potato masher.
Add the tomatillo puree and blend with the avocado. Blend in the lime juice. Fold in the onion and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Now, fold in your diced, smoked chicken. Check for seasoning and serve. I supplied mini pitas, but crackers or your favorite bread will do just fine. Just use what you like. It is your salad, after all.

Told you it was simple. Bon appetit.

Shrimp and Grits

Well, here is the first improvised recipe. Shrimp and grits is a southern classic that is on damn near every menu is the Carolinas. My girlfriend was seriously jonesing for this dish, so I decided to whip some up. Since I had never made it before, I had to wing it.
You should use old fashioned grits instead of instant. The real grits have a flavor and texture that instant can't even come close to.

Grits
1 cup yellow or white grits
5 cups water
1 tsp chipotle powder
4 oz cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Shrimp
1 pound medium shrimp (26-30 count)
4 oz butter
4 strip of bacon (turkey bacon is fine if that is all you have), cut into pieces
1 medium onion, small diced
4 cloves garlic, minced


Procedure


Place the 5 cups of water into a 3-4 quart pot and bring to a boil. Gradually whisk in the grits, return to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook for app. 30 minutes. At the end of cooking stir in the chipotle powder and cheddar cheese then season to taste with salt and pepper.

While the grits are cooking...

Peel the shrimp. Devein them if you like, but in shrimp this size it is not entirely necessary. SAVE THE SHELLs! You will need them. Melt the 4 oz of butter in a pan and add the shrimp shells. Saute them until the are pink. Strain the now shrimp flavored butter into a bowl. Be sure to press on the shells in order to strain out as much butter as you can. Throw away the shells and clean out your pan. Add your bacon to the pan and cook it until it is crisp. Add the shrimp butter to the crisp bacon. Saute your minced onion in the shrimp butter and bacon until it is translucent. Add the garlic and cook for a minute longer. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Add the peeled shrimp and cook for 3-4 minutes until they are uniformly pink.

To serve..
Spoon some grits into a shallow bowl and place some of your sauteed shrimp on top. Garnish with more cheese if you like. Enjoy.

Revision

In order to avoid any confusion, I am hereby changing the field name "psychophonetics" to "psychophonics". Apparently there is a school in South Africa that teaches some pseudopsychological hooey that they call psychophonetics and I certainly don't want a disreputable practice such as that casting a shadow on a thoroughly legitimate field of research and human enrichment as psychophonics. I will leave you with this thought:

semaphore = 2

Thank you.

Tortuous migration. That is a term used by cheesemakers to describe the movement of salt that is rubbed on a wheel of cheese as it makes its way through the interior. Literally, it means "turtle-like migration". At times, life can throw you little emotional cheese wheels through which you are forced to tortuously migrate. What frustrates me most is that these bland, pressed curds of trial are placed in your path even when you are trying to do the right thing. I don't have any witty advice for dealing with them. End of metpahor.

Words

I have decided recently that etymology robs us of some of the fun that we should be deriving from the English language. I understand that word origins are fundamentally important bits of knowledge, but I think that assigning meaning to words arbitrarily based on what they sound like they should mean would make people more interested in learning to speak properly. For instance, if I had my way, an oligarchy would be a type of pickle. That is just what I think of when I hear that word.
I have decided to name this new field of language study psychophonetics. I think the name speaks for itself. Submissions to the psychophonetic dictionary would be handled in the same way as other dictionaries and once the word was deemed to be in common use it would become a formal part of the language.

Some examples of what I have so far:
oligarchy=pickle
pumpkin=incest
analgesic=pain causer
scapegoat=lawnmower
potent=shanty

I am currently taking submissions. No made up words will be allowed. Just words that you think sound like they have the wrong meaning. Together we can make English the new Esperanto.

Polarization

I have a good friend who recently lamented the fact that too many people don't seem to understand that it is Us vs. Them; that the United States has enemies that hate us and that people have to accept the fact that these problems can't be fixed with hugs and other cultures don't see things the way we do .
There are certainly elements of truth to this statement. There are most assuredly people out there that hate America and Americans. This particular brand of person is of the belief that the only solution can be found by sifting through the ashes of a completely obliterated U.S. Believe me, I dislike those folks as much as the next American. Also, other peoples do have differing and sometimes contrary perspectives that we sometimes can't wrap our heads around. My misgivings, however, arise from the fact that this statement is so polar: Us and them, right and wrong, black and white. It would seem that as a people we have become overly fond of eliminating the shades of grey from their thinking.
The biggest problem with this is that it is a gross oversimplification of matters. To simply say an issue is only "this way" or only "that way" is to live in a world devoid of nuance when, in fact, nuance is what makes the world go around. Without an understanding of the subtle complexities of relationships between cultures, people just begin to say "Well, they are just different.", as if that is a justification for not even trying to relate to someone. The willful enforcement of a policy of ignorance like this leads to exactly what the world is mired in now: Huge swaths of "us" who think the only answer is elimination because "them" neither posess nor understand empathy. After all, if they don't share our ideals, how can they be capable of any higher mental function like that?
The moral is, once you have decided to reduce a matter to an either/or context, you have sealed your fate. You are either the destroyed or the destroyer. There is no appeal to mercy, graceful exit or negotiated peace. And to think that victory for your set of principles somehow justifies the extermination of the antithetical construct, well that is just barbaric. I have news for you, if that is your stand, then you are them. You are the same, villainous, immoral, ignorant and self aggrandising fountain of evil that you believe your enemy to be.
No, the world's problems can not be solved with hugs, but they will also not be solved by the wholesale slaughter of those that disagree with "us". Granted, sometimes force is the answer. I am not naive. On the other hand, the utter refusal to ever handle a growing concern proactively through dialogue, logical argument and a detremined force of will is ultimately self destructive. Everyone will run into a smarter, faster, stronger "them" eventually.

Musings on Management

The worst thing anyone can say to me when I see an ineffective procedure, system, etc., is "Well, that is just the way it has always been done." What profane ignorance! I had a boss who called this management by folklore. It is still one of the most brilliant things I have ever heard. Unfortunately, this is the way most management seems to be done. In the dogmatic pursuit of a few outdated axioms, most bosses proceed to fuck up management in story book ways: It is predictable, profound and always bears a moral that goes largely unheeded. And thus, history repeats itself at the expense of thousands of talented minds that might otherwise have remained just motivated and idealistic enough to work to make a difference. Of course, far more brilliant minds than mine have been saying these things for centuries, but these heretics have been forced to recant, go into exile, or worse.
Here is my moral, which will likely go unheeded: If you do not posses the mental faculties and self confidence to reassess your ways of doing things periodically, you are a bad manager. Go flip burgers.