Fight 4 Taste

Dear Mike, I am thinking about getting an Instant Pot. Other colors were a lot more expensive, so I'm good with the cheaper color. Does it really matter?  Unless that color adds a certain special spice to everything you cook that makes it taste like it came from your favorite restaurant or food truck. Maybe I need to research how color affects your instapot, crockpot, and kitchen-aid mixer and what comes out of them. Thanks, Amber from Sunapee. Dear Amber, For years, in the military.  When PT time came around, I always tied the 5 foot long dark green army wool scarf around my head as a headband, ninja style and talked with exaggerated mouth movements like in the old Bruce Lee movies (like Jones on Police Academy). It was just my thing.  Everyone in my unit expected it.  It was my normal.   Many years later, we are stupidly running in the dark, as a unit, before the sun rose, like a bunch of idiots on a Sunday morning.  We have a brand new 1 st Sargent....

There is an underrated movie from 1967 called “The Presidents Analyst”. It tells the story of a presidents analyst who cannot talk with anyone about what he knows. This creates more anxiety than he can deal with. It leads to catastrophic paranoia. In the meantime, various government agencies are trying to kill him. The phone company (a unit with the same power as Facebook, google, and other large personal data collecting monsters) wants what he knows to further their cause of power. He ends up being  protected by a suburban “Liberal” family that has more guns the the “right wing wackos” they are protecting themselves from. With many crazy mind bending plot twists  that were  common in the movies of the late 60’s, the kind that Austin Powers liked to spoof, in the end, the main character realizes the “it’s the phone company” behind all of the evil in their lives, behind all the evil in the world. Hollywood was serious about their message in an insane package. This movie wa...

It is funny how airports can bring the humanity of humanity to the surface, but also pretend that it is not really there. There is a feeling of aloneness while being immersed in a sea of other people. I feel other people’s emotions without even trying, so this is a very serious thing I experience. It can be hard to sort out, but just like everything else I remember that each of them has their own brand of trivial stress. The trivialness is temporary because when sitting in an airport waiting for a flight, certain daily concerns peel away like an onion skin. This is because mortality gets sprinkled onto our essence like a deep savory spice. It’s just enough to make you appreciate you daily life. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked around at the people at my departure gate and thought, “if this were the series LOST, what roles would each of us take should we end up on that island." Searching faces, I perceive where they fit into the story. This is what happens when you acc...

I love Char Siu!  That delicious boneless roast pork that you get in the finer Chinese restaurants. The cheap takeout restaurants try to make their own version which is known as boneless spareribs, but the real deal is mouthwatering life experience. You can make this at home. There are recipes on the Internet and on YouTube that will show you how to make the most wonderful  Char Siu ever.  For the past couple of years I have been making a recipe that is posted on YouTube by Ci Ci Li.  It is a simple easy to make recipe and the young lady in the video explains how to do it very well. I have brought the results of this recipe to work a couple of times and people have just crazed how wonderful it is. I decided to try another recipe this week by Mike from Strictly Dumpling. His YouTube channel does a wonderful job of selling the excitement that a meal can give you he is very animated and he makes you want to make what he is making, which is a very nice talent. The recipe...

so I was trying to decide what to cook.  In the fridge I hade a flank steak I 5awed a few days ago. Naturally I was thinking Asian. I wanted to see what others might marinade bier flank steak in. One person was boasting a genuine Carne Asada. While it literally means “grilled meat” it is a   a  Mexican  and  Central American  dish of grilled and sliced  beef , usually  arrachera ,  sirloin steak ,  tenderloin steak  or  rib steak , that is charred enough so as to bring the char into the flavor. But I then stumbled upon a quick YouTube video of Katie Brown the craft girl on public tv.She was making flank steak pinwheels. I decided to try them. She was using basil but I wasn’t listening and bought baby spinach.

J