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dcbc

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by dcbc

  1. Holy shit! What a soap opera. I don't have the patience to break this up into separate quotes to which I offer my witty rejoinder. So . . . The Surly lawyer contingent all involuntarily salivated when You quoted the teenage girl, "You always do this," etc. Your offer to help pull the car, which you assume is his responsibility, out of the ditch makes you a solid neighbor in my book. That sort of ask-no-questions type of response is rare in 2023 and super appropriate to the situation. The rest of the story with the side-piece is total WTF. I feel like Bill Murray in Stripes. "That story about you and the cow and how your friend wanted to make it with the cow? I want to party with you."
  2. I don't know whose voice I read this post in, but he was tough-sounding.
  3. They'll bill by the hour on this one. Good luck.
  4. dcbc

    Gumbo

    I wasn't complaining about the view. But my question remains. Just curious what's going on.
  5. dcbc

    Gumbo

    That looks really good. One question. Are those tomatoes? Or is that okra that's picked up some spice? I'll take my answer off the air.
  6. In true Larry fashion, I'll argue that the pettiness lies in her keeping that recipe a secret in the first place. Her own mother never knew it. How are we related? She's eleven years older than I am. But I'll totally update the thread. I'm not giving up. It'll make a good story for next Thanksgiving.
  7. We used to universally laugh at this sort of thing. Naturally, the Simpsons sort of predicted it. And by universally, I mean the people who liked the Simpsons, which I now recall did not include a lot of people in the, somehow quaint by modern standards, republican party of the time.
  8. As to the why, three words: untreated, mental illness. I do have past family drama on my wife's side I won't get into on here because I'm pretty sure some members of her side of the family read these forums and I love and respect them enough to want to keep that business private. But I'll just say that the combination of untreated bi-polar disorder and narcissism in just one person can be a family-destroying combination if left unchecked or even when the resultant behavior is called out. It's a dirty bomb of toxic rage actively looking for a spark. And it has quite the half-life.
  9. I'd be lying if I said I didn't sympathize with Latte Larry.
  10. This is my favorite thread of the year, and it's off to a good start. Our Thanksgivings have been pretty tame for the last couple of decades ever since my "step-grandmother" with her at-the-table, racist comments about her WalMart coworkers in Sealy, Texas" was out of the picture. So my mom is in an assisted living facility about 15 minutes from us and has been since 2020. Since she moved here, we no longer had to make the trek to Houston for the holidays and my sister and her daughter come to us (occasionally, my wife's dad and step-mother join us along with my Uncle and his new-ish wife). Anyway, this year, it's just my wife and I, our two sons, my mom, my sister, and her daughter. Great success! My sister and I split up cooking duties. This year, I'm handling the turkey, the dress, the gravy, the rolls, and some bread. She's got mashed taters, green beans, and apps. My wife is handling dessert. Easy. But there's a hint of of past conflict that I may twist a little for amusement's sake. It starts with my taking over gravy duty. My mom always made some baller gravy, the base of which was Heinz gravy in the jar, to which she added milled vegetables from beneath the roasted turkey and drippings. Along with something to make it darker (probably Brown 'n' Serve). Last year, my sister brought a jar of gravy and some sauteed veges that were diced up in the blender. Twas not that great. So this year, I took over the gravy. I spoke to her on the phone the other night and told her how I'd worked my ass off on the gravy, explaining the process. She jokingly said that I'd gravy-shamed her. All in good fun. So here's the weirdness. In 1982, when my grandmother was in her last hospital stay, my sister went to visit her and got her to give her the recipe to what she now calls, "Mamaw Bread." It's a dense white bread with a very soft crust and has a short shelf life. It's tasty, but nothing earth shattering. But when she first made it for our family and we asked her for the recipe, she refused to give it to us, saying she would pass it down to her daughter. I gave her sufficient hell over this because secret recipes are ridiculous and it's about process and technique, blah-blah-blah. No dice. For several years, I, who was not much of a baker tried to crack the code and create a good spite recipe for my grandmother's bread. I really didn't get close, but I did proceed to get a lot better at making bread, most of which was better anyway. Well, last years, she shows up for our Christmas gathering with loaves of Mamaw Bread as gifts. And during the holidays, I took a crack or two at getting a close clone of the leftovers we took home. I got closest with a modified loaf of Amish White Bread. And before moving on with life after the holidays, I remember thinking that using all milk instead of half-milk/half-water in the recipe would soften up the crust and get as close as to make no difference. I started planning the rolls and trying to decipher my wife's grandmother's recipe for that (because of course, the written-down version has no amounts for flour and seems to be written in reverse), when I remember something about using 100% milk in the spite bread recipe, which I took on again because the texture of the rolls was similar. But since it hasn't been a matter of utmost importance to me, I never wrote the recipe tests down with my other recipes. But thankfully, I'd emailed the recipe to my wife. So tonight, the bread lab is cranking up. My mom has been raving about the sourdough bread I've been making for her lately, and I said I'd bring some to Thanksgiving. I'll also be bringing some of the spite bread to serve alongside the sourdough bread and the rolls. No point will be made of it. It simply will be there. I'll see if it raises any eyebrows or leads to accusations of recipe theft. Sorry, all I have is self-manufactured drama as the younger brother. edited to add that I now realize that my life is, in part, a lower tier episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  11. Username checks out. I used to smoke when I was out, the beer was flowing, and people around me were smoking. Only pack I bought in my life was a pack of Marlboro Reds, which I proceeded to share with everyone around me at Liberty Lunch that night. My last cigarette was at this party in law school. The guy hosting it was #1 in our class, law as a second career. He had uniformed bartenders and bowls full of Dunhill cigarettes for whoever wanted them. I don't remember much about that night, but I smoked more than my share of Dunhills. I woke up the next morning feeling liked someone had kicked me in the side of the head and shit in my mouth. I told myself that was the last cigarette, and more than 24 years later, I haven't had a compulsion to smoke another one . . . until reading this thread.
  12. I would, but 3 quarts went into the gravy. What's left will go into the dressing. I made chicken stock a few weeks back, and that's going into the gumbo. So
  13. Yes. One could. And I keep plenty of boxes on-hand. But for the holidays or when I otherwise really want to do it up right, I make stock. Roasting the stunt turkey was the easiest, least time-consuming part of the process. Plus, pan drippings are a crucial ingredient, in my humble opinion. And since my primary bird is smoked, the best I end up with from that process is smokey butter, which is not without its charm, but . . . .
  14. When they were running through the wall of sound, Phil was set up in such a way where he could route the pickup for each string to separate speakers, IIRC.
  15. It's twoo. It's twoo. I'm like the Nathan Arizona of Vacation Hours - More than I can handle.
  16. Right. I thought that's what I said. Oh, I got it right the first time. My mind was on Thanksgiving the second time 'round. Good catch.
  17. Thankfully, my interaction with the public is nonexistent. And my vacation days and ability to take them are many. I won't portray myself as a do-gooder who works under miserable conditions to fight the good fight. I edited my post above to add that I'm fairly-compensated and have great benefits, but still take pride in my work, which I always remain mindful affects people's lives. The nature of my job allows me to check in on Surly when my brain needs a break. And with that, back to the grind.
  18. Thanks. Do you mean what is my role? Or it should be our respective roles? I checked my spelling, which usually is atrocious. And I got it right for once. And I would never suggest that I am not well-compensated or that State benefits aren't good. But I'll be working long past my otherwise young retirement age to put two kids through college versus many people in my field with comparable experience. But I never have regretted my career path as a state employee. It really is what I was meant to do.
  19. As a career state government employee, who always has tried to do his best and remembers why he got into this line of work in the first place (it wasn't to get rich), thank you. There are a lot of us who still believe our role is an important one. And while I happen to think the folks whose job it is to deliver clean, potable water to the rest of us are more important, we each have a role to play.
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