Wednesday, May 31, 2006

This *is* a tasty burger!

Things weren't all bad this weekend. We did get to hang out at home most of the weekend to attempt to unwind (apologies to Lou, happy birthday).

At Costco last weekend, I bought a pineapple. Rhonda occasionally bugs me to buy one, which I do reluctantly (since two people have to eat a boatload of pineapple to finish one off). But it was Costco! So I began to think about what I could make with pineapple.

I thought about making pineapple frozen yogurt, or whatever that stuff is they have at the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. (That stuff is off the hook!) But it hit me, I think in a dream.

Big Kahuna Burger.

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Yes, the breakfast of champions for Big Brain Brett, Flock of Seagulls, Marvin, and the guy who looks like Jerry Seinfeld with the Hand Cannon. I had pineapple, I had a propane grill, it was Memorial Day...the stage was set.

Thanks to the Internet, I found some suitable recipes off which to base my experiment.

First off, I went to the store. I was set on buying King's Hawaiian sweet rolls for my buns. Safeway didn't have the larger buns, so I decided to go White Castle slider-style on the burgers and bought 2 12-count packages of the little ones.

I made the teriyaki sauce/marinade first. I've used that recipe before and it's not bad. I mixed 1/2 cup soy sauce (Kikkoman) with 1/2 cup mirin (Takara is the good stuff) and 2 tablespoons honey (I usually use 3 packets of Splenda, but what the hell). I also put in about a tablespoon of ground ginger (didn't buy the real stuff) and two cloves of garlic (which I smashed but left whole - Rhonda's allergic and I removed them after the sauce was done). I simmered that for five minutes and put it in the fridge to cool.

Started pre-heating the grill. Put half on high and the other half on medium.

While it was cooling, I took a block of Colby cheese and sliced it up into 24 little squares. Put those in a Tupperware container and back in the fridge.

I took 2 pounds of the fattiest ground beef I could get (80% lean) and mixed in half of the marinade. I used a baking pan lined with plastic and tried the spread half of the meat around the best I could. Generously applied fresh ground pepper (but no salt, there's plenty in the teriyaki!). Used a spatula to cut them into 2.5-3" squares. Peeled the meat squares off the Saran Wrap and put them on sheets of aluminum foil, 6 to a sheet, stacked on top of one another. Repeated the process with the rest of the meat, trying to get as close to 24 burgers as possible. Stuck the meat in the freezer for a little while so it would peel off the foil easily and not fall apart on the grill.

Sliced the pineapple. Sliced 1/4"-1/2" thick slices with a big, sharp knife. Used a paring knife to slice off the rind and core the middle. Depending on size of the ring, cut into either 4 or 6 equal pieces, so the end result was a piece small enough to fit in the bun. Cut 24 of those and put them in Tupperware; cut the rest of the pineapple up for dessert/breakfast/snack. Guess you could use canned slices, but the whole driving force behind these burgers was that pineapple sitting on the counter.

Took the cheese, pineapple, meat and remaining marinade out to the grill. Threw pineapple slices on the medium side and meat on the hot-as-hell high side. Used a brush to dab teriyaki sauce on the meat and pineapple. Decided I'd probably lose a lot of pineapple if I tried flipping them. Constantly put out flare-ups with a squirt bottle. Flipped the burgers after a couple minutes and applied more teriyaki. After about a minute, very carefully put a slice of cheese on the burgers. After about two minutes, when the cheese is just starting to melt and you're reasonably sure everything harmful in the meat is dead, pull all the burgers and pineapple from the grill. Turn the medium side up to high and cook the rest of the burgers.

Assembly is as follows: grab a sweet roll, tear it in half with your thumb, add one hot, greasy piece of beef and cheese and one slice of grilled pineapple. Repeat five or six times. Serve with chips and beer, lumpia optional.

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(In this case, I used Kirin Ichiban, trying to stick with an Asian Pacific theme. But I wasn't wild about it and switched to Diet Coke.)

I was a little worried about how it would taste, but these little boogers were delicious in that not-at-all-healthy kind of way. Also, like ribs, they were addicting and small enough that you eventually ate way more than you planned to. We had Joy and BJ over and they confirmed that, yes, they were pretty damn tasty. And they ate them cold.

Post-mortem analysis:

  • I screwed up and bought Lay's (on sale) when I should've bought those Hawaiian chips (also on sale).
  • I should've bought better beer.
  • I should look harder for those larger rolls. I could've used bigger patties (like the pre-made ones from Costco sitting idly in the freezer) and whole slices of pineapple. And pieces of lettuce. The slider-style burger is a pain in the ass to prepare.
  • On the flipside, the sliders don't need mayo or sauce as badly as a larger burger would.
  • Because of my ultimate teriyaki sauce technique, these would not have been as good fried as the other recipes suggested. The sauce by itself its too salty, and the meat doesn't get that nice shiny look from the mirin if it's not grilled.
  • Besides, who stays inside on Memorial Day? It's cookout time, baby!
  • If I had fried the meat, I would've used all the teriyaki as a marinade (and used store-bought marinade) and cooked the burgers in the Foreman.
  • I could've saved some time and dirtied dishes by buying a store-bought sauce/marinade (lie Yoshida's), but the "homemade" sauce is better for Rhonda because we know what's in it (regardless of both mirin and garlic containing allergens), and I already had mirin. However, if I had Yoshida sauce in the fridge, I probably would've got lazy and used it.
  • Don't eat lumpia from the freezer if it's been in there for an unknown period of time in only a (non-freezer) Ziploc bag. Yuck.
  • If they don't taste good, drink more and they will gradually taste better.
  • Rhonda's eye was swollen like Rocky Balboa's on Tuesday morning. Evidently she is also allergic to pineapple. :(

The axeman cometh.

Courtesy Despair.com
I know it's been almost a month since my last post, but things around here have been busy, what with Rhonda's graduation (yay), my mom's uncharacteristic string of arm injuries (aww), and the usual calamity of everyday Silicon Valley serfdom.

Things have not been good on the job security front. The long-rumored announcement came today that Sun was cutting as many as 5,000 jobs. This was not news to the thousands of Sun employees with half a brain and access to the outside world, but not good news nonetheless.

So starting tomorrow, there will be great fanfare and many meetings called by upper management to tell us they can't really tell us anything at this time. Our stock had a momentary blip, as bloodthirsty vampires soulless capitalist dogs Wall Street analysts were unimpressed at only 4-5,000 joining the ranks of the unemployed in our floundering "recovering" economy.

So after months of speculation, there is still no relief in sight. Rumors are that even if I survive layoffs next month, I still need to survive round two in late July. Nevermind I've already survived more layoffs (six?) than I can remember in the last four years.

Things are not a lot better for Rhonda. A tenured teacher from another school came in and took her class for next year. Because she doesn't have much seniority, she is still without a contract for next year. Her principal would like to bring her back but there are no positions open for her. She has interviewed with a couple of other principals, but there is much bureaucracy at the district and while people insist she is being fought over and that she "shouldn't worry", they say it might be as late as August before she can be hired.

She's been told not to worry more times than I can count, which is an easy thing to say when your job is secure. Worse, now she's being told not to put all her eggs in one basket and to apply at other districts. If she'd been told that a month ago, she might have a job by now; instead, we're wondering if either of us will have a job come September 1.

This would not be a huge deal if we didn't have a rather large mortgage payment. We've even talked about "what if" we have to sell our house - which is compounded by a shaky real estate market.

I've taken a lot of this in stride, but yesterday, with a "financial update" con call for SUNW scheduled, I'd pretty much had it. I was trying to slice a ribeye steak in half lengthwise (since Costco cuts them friggin' huge and Rhonda can't eat a whole one), and I couldn't cut through a ribbon of fat in the middle. I ended up more or less massacring the beef, and I cut loose (loudly) with a string of obscenities that would make George Carlin blush. Then I pounded my hand on the sink (not very smart) and kicked the cabinet underneath it. After that, I tried to calm down but ended up sobbing on Rhonda's shoulder, holding my left hand out in front of me so as not to get nasty-ass beef blood all over her.

Rhonda worries all the time about all manner of things, and I am always the happy-go-lucky type who has to tell her not to stress out about little stuff. And other than our first layoff, I generally handle stress real well because I generally remember not to worry about things I can't control. But this has been an ongoing series of events compounding. They're not little things I shouldn't be worrying about. I have to worry about losing my job, losing Rhonda's job, losing our house, losing our insurance (no small thing with Rhonda's health), ruining our credit. Or even moving back to Stockton into one of our parents' houses (which would be utter, crushing, demoralizing defeat). It's real, grown-up stress.

I was better today, but that's really not saying much. In the end, this is a scenario neither of us have control over, so all we can do at this point is pray (which, I don't know about Rhonda, but I have been praying for financial stability every Sunday since we signed those papers). In fact, the only thing we could've done differently would be to keep renting instead of buying. Hopefully, it won't be the decision that comes back to bite us in the ass.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Party for your right to fight.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door." - Emma Lazarus

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"Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life." - John F. Kennedy

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"The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people." - Noam Chomsky

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"It takes a nation of millions to hold us back." - Chuck D, Public Enemy

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